Smokin'

Well, enough of the G-minors and slouching thoughts, northern melancholy. Funk: perhaps. But when it comes to soul, step aside.

The first music the dougal listened to was soul/blues ( B.B. King's album-yes, those were the days when we bought albums!-was the ultimate cool when others were listening to Blondie). It wasn't political. Howard Jacobson recently wrote on how Jewish people and black people shared a sense of exile. But no, it wasn't that-though being an outsider would always mean that we wouldn't take authority or orthodoxy seriously. It was just that the music was so much better! Of course, the same couldn't be said for cricket. Cricket is political and nothing gave us greater pleasure in the sweltering heat of the summer of '76 than to see the Rolls Royce float in and destroy England (Sorry, Jonah!). The Welsh and Irish were black as well. How we would sit around the television and blow like mad to prevent England from converting after a try!

But this is the type of stuff I listened to:

In any case, one thing that music does is that it prevents you from being a red-neck or bigot (I can see this being taken up as some sort of marketing strategy!). Well, I'm not so sure any more (Steiner: the relation between high culture and barbarism..Wagner). But on the other hand, perhaps Barenboim was on to something: an openness, an attentiveness to what is other, to the 'who-ness' of the other. So, yeah, there were some white women who could sing with soul (Lisa Stansfield, for example). And then there was the Queen of Neasden