In Pursuit of The Folk Rave
Words by Jamie Brett | 24.04.24
Venue MOT is the first of the venues in this study and marks the northernmost tip of the Bermondsey Triangle, situated in the industrial district of South Bermondsey in South East London located two miles south of London Bridge. Located in a small light industrial park, ‘Orion Business Centre’, Venue MOT occupies two identical prefab units built with metal shutters, breezeblocks and adorned with heavily graffitied walls. Although not all that is seen makes sense here, as Venue MOT occupies two units – Unit 18 and Unit 20, whilst Unit 19 which lies between the two, is occupied by a London souvenir shop distribution company, replenishing stock in Central London’s tourists hotspots by day.
The two venues are directly connected by a rear smoking area, allowing revellers to pass freely between the two, past the breeze-blocks which house all the souvenirs, pastiches and motifs that form British identity projected by the tourism industry. Opened in 2018 by Jan Mohammed, who had previously owned warehouse space in Excelsior Works, a Victorian Warehouse and works yard located further down the ‘canal’ on Surrey Canal Road. Renting cheap studio space to local young artists, Mohammed found his artists at Excelsior Works regularly playing music late into the night and identified a need for an accessible, licensed music venue to allow tenants to safely contribute to club culture without nightlife industry pressure, inflated costs or troublesome crowds. The venue is operated from a top-down structure, with Mohammed and promoter Kit Seymour managing programming, artist relations and venue infrastructure. Mohammed employs a freelance roster of over 15 people including sound technicians, lighting technicians, bar managers, bar staff, security, and cleaners. Since its inception, the venue has played a key role in the development of contemporary club culture in London, which I argue forms a new sonic identity for the capital, an identity plugged into the colonial routes of the Grand Surrey Canal, yet a sound which is future-looking and mostly queer, with nightlife venues such as Venue MOT, Avalon Café and Ormside Projects forming a hauntological ecology that is informed by, and thrives on, authentic sonic lineages through the vestiges of a colonial past emanating from the locale.
Avalon Café marks a historic intersection between the Grand Surrey Canal and the former Croydon Canal. Perched on a towpath, Avalon Café now feels optimistically continental, despite its close proximity to London Borough of Lewisham’s Household Recycling Centre or ‘tip’, and a large commercial Screwfix builders merchants. The café was opened in 2021 by community-gardener Paul McGann. With a background in community engagement within the equally deprived London district of Tottenham, Paul became a regular reveller in the Bermondsey Triangle through friends who rented space from Mohammed in Excelsior Works. Through a close-knit friendship and engagement with the artists community, McGann acquired a lease on Avalon Café with encouragement and support from Mohammed. Like the Bermondsey Triangle itself, Avalon Café undergoes a profound, yet covert nocturnal transformation. Serving breakfasts and coffee to the local community of workers, residents and creatives by day, Avalon Café moonlights as an underground nightclub come nightfall. Hidden behind a polystyrene tiled door integrated within the café wall, a serving hatch transforms into a DJ booth, and revellers follow the undulating bass of Romanian breakbeats, old skool electro, and dub heavy jungle.
Ormside Projects opened in 2015 by local artist Mike Levitt, taking over a Victorian warehouse across the Lewisham borough-boundary making it the only venue out of the three to be based in Southwark. Running with a more fine-art focus, Ormside Studios was the second of the venues to receive a full licence on the triangle. Prior to being awarded late licences, venues within the triangle relied on a system available within Lewisham Council called TENS (Temporary Events Notices). Although TENS have their benefits in providing a sense of freedom and ability to conduct a certain amount of events per year without requiring traditional licensing credentials, they restrict venues from being able to put on regular parties in a way that can be seen as unsustainable and less legitimate, with the venue often experiencing more scrutinous handling form local policing units. The Bermondsey Triangle straddles two London boroughs (Lewisham and Southwark) whilst being served by one unified policing unit (London Metropolitan Police) and therefore licensing agreements can be a point of contention. It’s worth noting that Ormside Project received substantial local press regarding the use of a top barrister in order to challenge a licensing department, a process which Mike Levitt believes has now had a positive impact on other venues looking to set up in the area.
Even Venue MOT’s record on HMRC’s Companies House (a national legal register of all businesses within the UK and Northern Ireland) somehow allows some room for error with the official business address registered as the misspelt ‘Surry Canal Road’. There is almost a sense that no-one is looking here, not even the government, as the establishment turns a blind eye to the legally clandestine activities of a district earmarked for demolition.
When embarking on this research, I approached from a folkloristic perspective with original intentions to marry historic elements of folkloric activity within activities that take place within the Bermondsey Triangle from the angle of modern rituals. However, as research progresses, I have decided to test this method of ‘proving folklore’ in order to raise the question – how can we move beyond the rigidity of Stith’s motifs or Amos’ ‘towards a definition’, and into a new frontier of folkloric classification? Would this be more helpful for the wider field?
To test the effectiveness of Amos’ classification methods, I have developed a subverted version of the table, the ‘Bermondsey Folklore Triangle’ is informed by Amos’ rules of what constitutes folklore; on the inside we see the core ritualistic elements of the Bermondsey Triangle that could fit under Amos’ definition. Although this does seem convincing for the purpose of proving rave as folklore, does it really matter? In Michael, Brockens’s 2003 publication ‘What is the folk scene now?’, he discusses the unhelpful role of what he describes as a ‘largely middle-class folklore elite’, a group found in folk clubs and societies across the country who demonstrate a resistance to any organic evolution of folklore, with a particular disregard for modernity in the form of pop and dance music. Perhaps this comes into play when ‘searching for a definition’.
When I asked Venue MOT owner Jan why he opened Venue MOT he stated, ‘I never thought what the future was, I remember having a smile on my face. And it became my business. And then it became other people's identity’.
In his academic paper on tourist studies, Tutenge discusses a very different kind of reverie experience, perhaps a more organised and less organic form of esoteric gathering, however, his study discusses the mechanism of a nightclub as being a form of ‘intensity machine’ which accentuates people’s emotions and actions in a form of life-sped-up. Perhaps the Bermondsey Triangle is an intensity machine, however, despite the clubs fitting within a traditional business model of a capitalist venture, there appears to be a different kind of happening going on here, different from a mainstream nightclub. I asked Jan about the mainstream, and what he meant by what he describes in his own terms, as the ‘high street club’. Jan takes the opportunity to discuss why the Bermondsey Triangle is almost entirely a product of his own unintentional doing (this is something mentioned by both of the other owners), ‘No it's me. It's so hard to admit. But because I have paid mentally, emotionally to become the person - not financially. When you live a life where you actually know what you're doing, it's weird to the rest of the world.’. Is Jan a martyr to grassroots creativity and is this a recurring theme within folkloric gatherings? They certainly aren’t renowned for being commercial hotspots, but I wonder if Jan is touching on a post-capitalist element of clubland not dissimilar to Brocken’s archaic 70s folk clubs?
When I asked Venue MOT owner Jan why he opened Venue MOT he stated, ‘I never thought what the future was, I remember having a smile on my face. And it became my business. And then it became other people's identity’.
Akin to the military, in his 2020 thesis, Jeremy Swafford refers to club culture as a petri dish for designer and cutting-edge technology to enter society. From designer drugs to amplifiers, Swafford argues that club culture, despite their often-anti capitalistic natures, have marketing value that ricochets within society and pushes underground cultures beyond their intended remit.
Although I am captivated by the statement, I can’t see this taking hold within the Bermondsey Triangle. With clubs taking up cheap space and employing DIY values from the 1990s, it appears that technology and cutting-edge design have now taken a backseat, reinforcing the idea that the triangle represents a new and stripped back kind of party, devoid of mainstream nightclub principles.
In the interviews with Jan, it appears that his key focus on running Venue MOT may be something that could be described as radical care ‘All I've actually done is give positive people the opportunity to think and self-reflect. You are the dictator of your own work, you know’. Hobart describes radical care as a new way of approaching ventures, a post-capitalist approach, ‘As global capitalism breaks down in various sites across the globe, we see radical care emerge through collective action.’’.
Similar to Tutenge’s theory of the intensity machine, it appears that the underground nightlife space also plays a role as a gentrification machine, highlighted in Assister’s work.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2019, club culture has been under the spotlight as a canary in the coal mine (or a litmus test) for accelerated gentrification in an-inner London urban area or a residential lower income corner of the capital. Further on the topic of nightlife and gentrification, in the web article ‘Techno-Gentrification: act 1’, Kabuiku and Rennela outline a series of tactics used by developers, place makers, and commercial agents as a method of de-transitioning lower income communities from an area through the use of electronic dance music venues as a starting point for bringing in income and raising local property prices; ‘Club scenes and electronic dance music have always been tied to the economical conditions they develop themselves in’.
Jan’s non-profit approach to club culture is perhaps attune to a global phenomenon of care as a primary factor to leading a post-pandemic cultural organisation. Gone are the days of acid house hedonism and cash being king, we are no longer tied through a hippy-ish ideology of connecting to Mother Earth. Instead, we are relying on the collective individual. Instead of partying atop the scapegoat of green and verdant land, we celebrate inside inner-city industrial units, over land contaminated. It is notable during Mike’s interview that he understands Jan’s ability to gain a license so quickly as a result of the police seeing his ability to care for young people within the space, encouraging him to apply for a license with their blessing, or perhaps ‘radical care’. Perhaps this is a down-to-earth steering away from traditional ways of looking at rave through the lenses of indulgence, otherworldliness or hedonism.
Turning to Google Reviews left by customers of the Bermondsey Triangle, I’m looking to gain a balanced understanding of the positive and critical opinions of these spaces. There certainly seems to be a sense of the esoteric here as one reviewer writes, ‘I’m almost tempted to not review this place lest the secret get out about this place’. Another reviewer contributes ‘I had to get a bolt to the club closer to the location just to avoid getting mugged lol its a sketchy area very that at night’ and on the contrary another reviewer mentions ‘Lovely venue, has a more intimate community vibe with nice decor and a fat soundsystem’. It’s interesting how perceptions of the triangle can differ between individuals, and I believe this is due to a complex interplay between socio-economic background, peer groups and music taste.
These reviews are interesting ethnographic material, they are valuable in offering alternative perceptions of the area of study, and I’d like to touch upon my first own experience attending the Bermondsey Triangle for the first time.
Having been a relatively experienced raver in nightlife scenes in the UK and Germany, my first experiences at Venue, MOT provided me with a sense of community and belonging that I had never felt in South East London, despite having lived in the area for 6 years prior. Perhaps it is due to the sense of energy in the space that taps into something that we all need, something that Mohammed describes as ‘deep, dark, and intense’. Spending time within these venues, I have spent many hours on the dancefloor, anonymous and synonymous with the space, my sense of self and identity merging with the music, the haze and the often intensely hot, small dancefloor. I have never felt more of a Londoner as I do spending time regularly in venues along the Bermondsey Triangle. I have also frequently attended these spaces alone and found that the rest of my night was spent anything but. There appears to be something cathartic about the venue’s invitation to embodiment. Whether I arrive excited and celebratory after a busy week, or I feel anxious and out of flow, the energy of the dancefloor offers a cradle of acceptance for whatever you are feeling. Excitement blends with the pumping bass, and nervousness prangs with the crashing percussion. It’s at this moment that you have reached a form of homeostasis with the vibe, the soundsystem, the triangle. My favourite genre of music to dance to is Jungle, and it’s interesting to hear Black British History researcher Dhanveer Singh Brar interpret this history, ‘but the anxiety in the music was mastered and turned into a kind of nonchalance[…] jungle contains a non-verbal response to troubled times, a kind of warrior’s dance.’. In Sonic Intimacy, James adds ‘Jungle sonics and samples reference the social issues of the time: drugs, inner-city, violence, loneliness and disconnection[…] these were combined in Junglist knowledge.’. Perhaps this supports the case for the folk-rave as a reflector or mirror to the community it serves, more about the individual in the space. I recognise that my own connection to Jungle is likely connected to the kind of music that was played in my household growing up; music genres like Reggae, Motown, Soul and R&B. As the rebellion of my teens set in, I began listening to the cheeky sounds of UK Garage and then into Emo, Nu-Metal, Pop Punk and Rockabilly and I believe that Jungle marries the Jamaican sensibilities with the rebellious nature of alt-rock. My first experience in MOT felt like a re-connection to my tribe and in further research I would like to explore the relationship between the individual and the collective in the folk-rave space.