Today I went with a bunch of friends to the so-called ‘Love Music Hate Racism’ one-day/all-day festival event in Victoria Park, London. Yesterday, when nothing really happened except some mild care-taking of some annoying hangovers, the weather was quite amazing with temparatures on the right side of 20 degrees - today, when more than 100.000 people were gathered to support the fight against racism and facism in London, it rained cats and dogs for nearly 5 hours and exactly until there was 30 minutes left of the event. I believe that is what is known as bad luck and just so really really typical.
Nonetheless, it was a quite kicky happening with more than 50 bands playing at two separate stages for more than 6 hours. I got there somewhat late though, but it was still cool to see so many people being there and supporting the initiative even though the weather was horrible and the sound pretty bad.
The event is made on background f the equivalent one some 30 years ago where a group of political activists got together with a group of musicians to form ‘Rock Against Racism’. It was a movement formed in reaction to rising xenophobia and racism fuelled by Nazi organizations like the National Front whereas today most of the musicians and people demonstrated against the BNP (British National Party). In 1978, bands like The Clash, Steel Pulse and the Tom Robinson Band, to name but a few, helped create a political movement among music fans. This year my personal favourites were among others; The Good The Bad & The Queen, Roll Deep and Wiley : A rather different line-up from the original one, but The Times They Are A-Changing as my non-mutual friend Bob Dylan says it.
The festival’s main bulletin was to campaign for the idea of ‘Racism seeks only to divide and weaken us’, and I hope everybody who’s reading this blog can agree to that. I mean, just look at some of of BNP’s main policies at their website, which I hope will illustrate their illogical contribution to uphold an irrational tension between races. One of their policies is, according Richard Barnbrook (member of BNP), to discourage interracial marriage as; ‘We believe in human diversity and in preserving the individuality and identity of all different ethnic groups… While a small number of mixed marriages in Britain – or mixed race children - won’t, in themselves, make any difference, if this is encouraged however as it is at present by politicians and the media then inevitably the traditional British genotype will be endangered in the long-term.’ It reminds me scarily much about Le Pen’s rehtoric positions immigrant groups as the ‘foreign enemy within’ with images of purity, cleanliness and contamination distinguishing the genuine ‘French French’ (In this instant the ‘English English’) from their sullied pseudo-compatriots (as described by Ann Stoler, the anthropologist, in ‘The decolonization of imagination’). I must admit that I am rather dissapointed and ashamed to live on the same planet with people like that.
I have uploaded some pictures from the park, and as you can see, a rather big number of people went there although the weather was horrible. Tomorrow I am going to a Sebastien Tellier concert in Scala, so I will upload some pictures and write some notions on that here at simple common sense (hopefully by Wednesday).
All pictures above are taken and copyrighted by Christian Halsted ®
