In the 1950s, Roni Size’s parents emigrated with a large group of families from their native Jamaica to the English seacoast town of Bristol. They traveled across the ocean because they were promised jobs, and though many of the opportunities fell through, they stayed anyway — and planted the seeds for a musical revolution. In the ’90s, Bristol has spawned such innovators as Size and his Reprazant collective, Massive Attack, Tricky, Nellee Hooper, Smith & Mighty and Portishead.
“Now that I’ve been all over the world to many different countries, I realize how fortunate I was to grow up in Bristol,” Size says. “I found how few multicultural states there are in the world, but Bristol has this mood because of the cultural landing that happened in the ’50s, a culture brought across the ocean and which blossomed when it came in contact with another culture.
“Each year we would have an event in Bristol called St. Paul’s Carnival, which is basically a celebration of black entertainment, music, history, cooking, culture. And that was a huge influence on me and the people I grew up with.”
Out of this cultural stew emerged a generation of deejays and producers who grew up in the clubs, drawing on the influences of American hip-hop and Jamaican reggae and blending them with new, readily available technology. The result was a new kind of club music: the spooky, neo-psychedelic street grooves of trip-hop and the skittering snare beats and thick, reverberating bass lines of drum ‘n’ bass.
Though it was Goldie, a London native, who produced the first drum ‘n’ bass landmark with the “Timeless” album in 1995, it was Size who brought the sound to a new level of mainstream recognition when his 1997 debut, “Newforms” (Mercury), won the coveted Mercury Prize, England’s equivalent of the album of the year.
“It was a shock,” Size says. “I think we won because our music is potentially something new and different. Potentially it holds a scene and a movement, a new generation of music. Now it’s up to us to prove it’s not a myth.”
What distinguishes “Newforms” from other drum ‘n’ bass releases is its inviting blend of new and old, the way it mixes the space-age abstraction of what is essentially a new musical vocabulary (in which the snare drums function as lead instruments rather than as timekeepers) with plush soul vocals, jazz bass lines and live instruments. “Newforms” isn’t about songs in the traditional pop sense, but in its plush layers of texture and rhythm, it owes much to early hip-hop, the funk of James Brown and the dub innovations of King Tubby and Lee “Scratch” Perry.
“Combining the (electronic) sampling with the (live) instruments was a way of reflecting the era we were brought up in,” Size says. “But the album is only a skeleton of ideas, and timing played a good part in its success — there was nothing around at (that) moment to compare it with, which is why I think it won the Mercury Prize.”
Size says he’s well aware that America has not embraced electronic music to the degree that much of the rest of the world has. “There’s a bit of hype building up in America, where there wasn’t any in England before we released the album,” Size says. “People are waiting and expecting to see something, maybe more than we’re capable of giving them at the moment. Because we are still young ourselves. The fact (is) that we’ve done a mere 80 shows in England and Europe — we have a way to go.
“But we were inspired by what we saw happening in America in the ’80s. We saw people like Run-D.M.C. and Public Enemy doing videos, putting on the live shows and becoming part of the system until they were the system. That’s what we hope to do one day.”
Size and Reprazent — consisting of four deejay-mixers, an emcee, a singer, a drummer and a bassist — will make their Chicago debut March 21 at Metro.
Wilco on a roll
Jeff Tweedy may want to take 1999 off, because Wilco’s singer-songwriter is busying himself with no less than three recording projects that could be released this year. He recently wrapped up sessions for a new Golden Smog record with the likes of Dan Murphy (Soul Asylum) and Jody Stephens (ex-Big Star), and is in the midst of recording a new Wilco album in Austin, Texas. But his most intriguing project is a collaboration between Wilco and British folk-rocker Billy Bragg.
Bragg was approached by the daughter of Woody Guthrie to write music for some of the hundreds of sets of lyrics the folk legend left behind when he died in 1967. Bragg agreed, then hired Wilco to collaborate on the songwriting and recording. Sessions were recently completed in Chicago and Dublin, with Bragg and Tweedy sharing lead vocals.
Tweedy says he and Bragg were honored to collaborate, however distantly, with one of the 20th Century’s most influential figures. “It’s gonna say Guthrie-Tweedy on the publishing credit,” he says, shaking his head in awe. The singer’s nicotine drawl does justice to Guthrie’s lyrics, which encompass children’s verse (“Hoodoo Voodoo”), impressionistic poetry (“California Stars”) and, of course, political anthems (“Christ for President”). Bragg is particularly compelling on a solo acoustic version of Guthrie’s tender “Ingrid Bergman.”
The disc is expected to be released in June.
