- These everyday vignettes of mid-20th-century life in the UK for the Afro-Caribbean community still resonate decades later.
- A few years back, Honest Jon's record shop on Portobello Road had a photo of a young couple hanging in its front window. One day, an elderly man came to the counter, pointed to the photo and said: "That's me." As Honest Jon's co-owner Mark Ainley tells it, the man spent some time reminiscing about the image, taken of him and his then-partner several decades earlier. The photo was the cover of the second London Is The Place For Me compilation, part of a series that for 18 years has epitomised the shop's deep connection to West London life and culture.
Since 2002, the London Is The Place For Me series has documented and celebrated the music made by post-Windrush generations arriving in the UK in the years after World War II, mostly from the West Indies and West Africa. (Many settled in West London.) London Is The Place For Me 7 & 8, packaged together as one CD set and two double-vinyl LPs, shows once again the crucial musical contributions made by Afro-Caribbean communities not just in London, but across the UK.
The two volumes, which contain music made between 1948 and 1966, capture a wide range of styles and sounds. Volume 7 is subtitled "Calypso, Palm-Wine, Mento, Joropo, Steel & Stringband," and its 20 songs are historical documents as illuminating as any book or film about post-war British life. The lyrics touch on colonisation, racism, love, sport and, on Lili Verona's "Underground Train," the tube, containing the still-useful suggestion to "walk the journey and avoid the misery." There's a lot of ground covered rhythmically, from the the gorgeous oil drums on Trinidad Steel Band's "Caroline" to the heady mixture of maracas, congas and bongos on West African Rhythm Brothers' 1960 song "Ema Foju Ana Woku."
Volume 8, meanwhile, focuses on the music of Lord Kitchener, who was on board the Empire Windrush when it arrived in 1948. A towering figure in the history of British and Trinidadian music, he wrote the song that gave this compilation series its name, plus countless others documenting the joys and miseries of life in the UK as well as events back in Trinidad.
As the educator and music journalist Jacqueline Springer writes in the sleeve notes, these compilations are a reminder "of how imperialism geographically disrupted and transatlantically enslaved a race." Several decades after the Windrush docked in the UK, the British government in 2018 set about an appalling crackdown that saw people wrongly detained and in some cases deported. So, for all the light-hearted lyrical charm in Lord Kitchener songs like "Life Begins At Forty" and "Manchester Football Double," it's his meditations on race and colonialism that strike hardest. "Every door is shut in your face," Kitchener sings on "If You Brown," before reflecting on workplace discrimination ("But when they saw my face, the foreman turned and said, 'Somebody took the job yesterday'").
All of this makes the music and the stories contained within London Is The Place For Me 7 & 8 feel more profound than ever. It's impossible to imagine what modern British music would be like without the musicians featured on this compilation. You can trace a line from these artists through to the rise of soundsystem culture, which in turn inspired electronic genres like jungle, drum & bass, UKG, dubstep, grime and just about everything else. Josey Rebelle recently tweeted that the world would be "pretty fucking dry" without soundsystem culture, and of course she's right. The music on London Is The Place For Me is an important part of the story.
TracklistVolume 7
01. Lord Beginner - Sons And Daughters Of Africa
02. The Lion - Royal Wedding
03. The Mighty Terror - Hydrogen Bomb
04. Dai Dai Simba - Modern Telephone
05. Willie Payne & The Starlite Tempos - Wa Sise
06. The Mighty Terror - Emperor Of Africa
07. Louise Bennett - Bongo Man
08. Marie Bryant - My Handy Man
09. Nigerian Union Rhythm Group - Tortoise
10. Calypso Rhythm Kings - Boule Vese
11. The Mighty Terror - Life Is Like A Puzzle
12. The Mighty Terror - Chinese Children
13. Bill Rogers - Hungry Man From Clapham
14. Lili Verona - Underground Train
15. The Lion - Highway Code
16. Billy Sholanke - Kana Kana
17. Calypso Rhythm Kings - L'Année Passée
18. Lord & Lady Beginner - One Morning
19. West African Rhythm Brothers - Ema Foju Ana Woku
20. Trinidad Steel Band - Caroline
Volume 8
01. Lord Kitchener - Carnival Road March
02. Lord Kitchener - No More Taxi
03. Lord Kitchener - Mango Tree
04. Lord Kitchener - Food From The West Indies
05. Lord Kitchener - Alphonso In Town
06. Lord Kitchener - Come Back In The Morning
07. Lord Kitchener - Too Late Kitch
08. Lord Kitchener - Drink-A-Rum
09. Lord Kitchener - Constable Joe
10. Lord Kitchener - Pirates Of Paria
11. Lord Kitchener - Carnival In Town
12. Lord Kitchener - Is Trouble
13. Lord Kitchener - If You Brown
14. Lord Kitchener - Life Begins At Forty
15. Lord Kitchener - Manchester Football Double
16. Lord Kitchener - The Denis Compton Calypso
17. Lord Kitchener - Mistress Jacob
18. Lord Kitchener - London Is The Place For Me
19. Lord Kitchener - Tie Tongue Mopsie
20. Lord Kitchener - Dora (Meet Me At The Pawnshop)
21. Lord Kitchener - If You're Not White You're Black
22. Lord Kitchener - Africa My Home
23. Lord Kitchener - Nora
24. Lord Kitchener - Kitch In The Jungle