I visited one of my old haunts in Bristol the other day, a pub called the Star and Garter, situated in Montpelier, Bristol. I used to go there in the 1980’s, listen to reggae until the wee hours. DJ Derek would put vinyl reggae albums on, and we could sit and drink and even when the pub was meant to close, the owner would simply lock the door and we could all continue to drink and listen to music. The police never disturbed the place, as far as I know. They were good times. The racial upheaval and social tensions of the 1970’s seemed behind us. The riots in Toxteth, Liverpool, in 1981 had come and gone and a similar racially tainted riot in St Paul’s, Bristol in 1980 had also passed. St Paul’s is the area in Bristol where many of the Caribbean Community had lived for a long time, and racial tensions were never far away. My girlfriend was a Jamaican English woman and she lived in the heart of St Paul’s, so I got to know the place well. I lived nearby in Montpelier and St. Werburghs, two traditionally working-class areas that began to be gentrified from the 1980s’ and are now so expensive, because of exiles from London, that the place is transformed.
Bristol evolved as a wealthy city due to the slave trade and was a center of the slave trade until it was stopped in the early 19th century. The legacy of slavery was exposed once more in the last years as demonstrators tore down a statue of Edward Colston, a famous Bristolian who was also a well-known slave trade magnate. Bristol was also the center of racial tensions in 1963 when there was a boycott of Bristol Omnibus Company for refusing to employ black or Asian bus crews. After four months, the company backed down and it is thought that this helped pass the Race Relations Act of 1965 in the UK.
The pub was threatened with closure and demolition after the owner died but a campaign that involved the famous Drum and bass DJ, Ronnie Size, saved the venue and now it is a vibrant pub again. It was also one of the venues for Bristol’s carnival last weekend, the Bristol version of the famous Notting Hill Carnival in London, celebrating Caribbean culture and Reggae music. Walking on City Rd on Saturday and seeing many, many thousands of people there, with multiple sound systems blasting music, hundreds of spontaneous food joints, and revelers as far as one could see could be a bit unsettling for the naïve eye. It really was a massive street festival and so I thought I would go to the Star and Garter where it would be maybe quieter. I was wrong. A huge sound system was pummeling reggae music, the bass so loud and deep that you felt your liver vibrate. About 500 people were dancing and drinking, a small square with a kid’s playground allowing folk to sit while everyone else danced. I knew this square well as in the 1980’s I was part of a street theater and juggling group and we would often perform on the square there. But I had not been back for many years and of course most people there were not born when I was hanging out there as a young man.
Reggae music has become an integral part of British music culture, starting in the 1960s with the earlier ska and rock steady music and then of course with Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer and others, bringing roots reggae to a new generation of young Britons. Reggae has since never left. An amazing book on the history of Reggae and its integration into British life is called When Reggae was King, by Lloyd Bradley. He was around in the 1970s when the first Jamaican sound systems came to London, especially around West London neighborhoods like Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove. His book describes the development of music and sound systems in Jamaica, beginning in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and then the competing dynamics of sound system producers such as Coxsone Dodd (his name Coxsone was due to his cricket skills and was therefore compared with Alex Coxon, a member of Yorkshire Cricket club in the 1960s. Another strange example of the symbiosis between Jamaican and British culture). Dodd was influential in the development of reggae legend, Lee Scratch Perry and U Roy and Prince Buster and had a long running competition and feud with another producer, Duke Reid. They would both try and get the latest rhythm and blues songs from the USA, using contacts with Jamaicans living in the USA and would then exploit their unique songs to gain more popularity.
As the years went by, the competition between various sound systems became violent, part of the ongoing social upheaval in the 1970s and being fomented by the CIA who were destabilizing Jamaica as part of their rather paranoid cold war projections. Various sound systems then came to the UK in the 1970’s, mostly in London, coming with the 2nd phase of Caribbean immigrants to the UK after the 1st Windrush generation, named after the boat that brought them to the UK in the 1950’s. This whole episode was unfortunately exploited by the UK government 50 years later when they challenged the right to live in the UK for many of this first generation if they were unable to verify their residency in the UK, and this was after people had lived, worked, paid taxes and basically integrated into British society. It was an egregious act and caused a lot of backlash. However, at Glastonbury last week, the 1st set on the Pyramid stage on sunday was the Windrush Choir and Bristol Reggae Orchestra. It was great. No one wanted them to finish.
While Lloyd Bradley was hanging in London, frequenting sound system haunts, I chose to wander off to India to look for enlightenment. But maybe he came closer to God than I did. One time, he was working for a sound system/club and was manning the door and was told that no one without a pass could enter. No one. Suddenly a massive entourage arrived, a lot of bling around and demanded entrance to this young white boy. He did his duty and said no, but then was told that the group was with Bob Marley, so he better let them in. He still declined and a discussion ensued until the passes suddenly appeared. The entourage then went in and as Bob Marley appeared, he gently touched his arm and said something like “cool man.” It was a sweet story.
Back to the Star and Garter, I was in my element, dancing to reggae in the center of Bristol, 38 years later from when I was living there. It was going back to my roots and now another generation of Brits were grooving to the beats. Strangely, people spontaneously started to give me drinks. Maybe it was my snazzy waistcoat and hat, but I was given one beer and when dancing I started talking to many people and was offered drinks again. One person I talked to happened to be in the same small Spanish village I was visiting 6 weeks ago at about the same time. He was part of a spontaneous rainbow gathering, which happens throughout Europe, groups of hippies and young folk who would choose places to meet up, often without any organization or liaison with authorities. They were evicted by the Guardia Civil and ended up in Bologna, an amazing beach town in the Costa de la Luz in Southern Spain, on the Atlantic coast. A funny coincidence. Further conversations ensued and when discussing various places that I have lived, one person said, well, have you lived in Hereford? (a small city in rural England, on the border of Wales). I said, of course. In fact, it was the last place I lived in the UK, before leaving for the USA in 1988. How funny that was.
The border country of England and Wales, where Hereford is situated, is one of my favorite places in the UK. Although I was brought up in the Bristol area, I feel a strong bond for the border lands of England and Wales, going up from Monmouth which is right on the border, up to Hereford and to Hay on Wye. The Black Mountains are part of the Brecon Beacon National Park area of Wales (now called Bannau Brycheiniog), an amazingly beautiful place designated as a “place of outstanding beauty.” My father would take me and many other kids camping there in the summer, especially Llanthony Valley, where the small hamlet of Capel-y-ffin is found, which consists of two chapels and one farmhouse. The ruins of Llanthony Abbey are also in the valley, a catholic monastery and church, desecrated by Henry 8th as part of his destruction of the Catholic Church in England in the 16th century. It is truly a beautiful place. I lived for a while in a place called Garway Hill, where the nearby hilltop with wild horses looks over the Black Mountains, all the way up to Hay bluff, with the historic town of Hay on Wye lying beyond the bluff. Hay is now famous for having one of the largest literary and cultural festivals in the world, stemming from its reputation as having the most second-hand bookstores in the world.
Near where I lived is a 11th century church, a Knights Templar Church. The Templars were a medieval religious military order, which were involved in several crusades for over 300 hundreds until they were suppressed by the Catholic Church and the Pope, who formed an alliance with the French king at the time. Many were killed and their land and belongings taken, some of which were given to another religious group at the time, the Order of Hospitallers. When looking at a map of the UK, it gives the impression that Wales is bigger than it is, as the English border encroaches quite far into the landmass that seems to be Wales. There are castles dotted all along the border area, revealing the amount of warfare between the Celts and the assortment of Saxons, Normans, and Brits, which came to be known as the English.
All border lands have their own unique story and tend to be interesting places to explore. I just finished a book called Border, a Journey to the Edge of Europe, by Kapka Kassabova, a Bulgarian author. This is a book about the borderlands of Turkey, Bulgaria, and Greece, one of the most interesting cultural and political crossroads in the world. The border of three countries, and of Islam and Christianity, of the old Soviet Union (Bulgaria) and NATO, (Greece), the EU and non-EU and now the place where so many refugees from Syria and Afghanistan arrive. Even in 1989, at the end of the Cold War, hundreds of thousands found themselves on the wrong side of the border, Muslim Bulgarians of Turkic origin suddenly were told to go to Turkey even when they did not speak Turkish. It was the same for Turkic Bulgarians who had to move to Bulgaria. This was a repeat somewhat of what happened to people of the region after the Balkan wars in 1913 and then after WW1 when Bulgaria had to forfeit its access to the Aegean coastline and nearly all its Macedonian territory, as well as northern territory to Romania.
The author describes the stories of many people trying to escape one country to get to another, having to navigate the mountains and forests of the border land, often impregnable areas were getting lost was nearly impossible to avoid. During the Cold War, many of those caught trying to escape to Greece were shot for their troubles. Military personnel of all countries were very active in the whole region for a long time. It was also a very active area for all kinds of smuggling of course, whether weapons, tobacco, or humans. In recent years, it has seen its fair share of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and other countries, who would often be dumped in the mountains near the border, and not knowing if they were in Turkey, Bulgaria or Greece.
The borders of the whole region have changed dramatically over the centuries. Historically it was where the Scythians, Persians and other empires would begin their invasions of the Balkans and other parts of Europe. The whole area of Western Turkey, (west of the Bosporus, Bulgaria and North Eastern Greece was known as Thrace, a distinct part of ancient Greece, with its own culture and history. The book explores this border region in an evocative way, showing the historical influences that throughout the ages impacted all the peoples that lived there. The book probes interesting questions of what it means to belong to one place, one culture, and especially in borderlands, how unpredictable this may be and yet people are still drawn to a particular place despite this. For most, the need to have roots is as important as anything else in life, unless being a true nomad is your calling, like the Romany people of the region, who still live in the Balkans and who historically have suffered from a lot of prejudice over the centuries for their choice of lifestyle.
This area is not far from Ukraine and Russia, where, again, borders are leading to violence and war. Millions of Russian speaking Ukrainians find themselves in the middle of a war that puts the alliance of Ukraine and NATO, against the Russian Federation. The shifting alliances and tensions have always been there. The Soviet Union papered over the cracks of borders and culture for a while but essentially these issues have always been there. Another book that explores the tensions of global powers and which led to the 1st World War is called The Three Emperors: Three Cousins, Three Empires and the road to World War One by Miranda Carta. It is about three Kings who happened to be cousins: Nicholas 11 of Russia, George V of the United Kingdom, and Wilhelm 11 of Germany. The Balkans again were the center of the tensions between various countries, with the Triple Entente alliance of Russia, France and the UK against the Triple Alliance of Austria/Hungary, Italy, and Germany. These alliances, formed before WW1 become the two sides in the war, which heated up after the Austria/Hungarian empire decided to re-conquer Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908. At the same time, Bulgaria announced its independence from the Ottoman empire and Greece claimed Crete. The moves against Bosnia enraged Russia and Serbia, the latter wanting to absorb Bosnia itself and which was Russia’s biggest ally in the region. A few years later, The Balkan wars broke out and the seeds of the first world war were put in place. Germany was particularly keen to show its force and be taken seriously. The book explores the dysfunctional relationship between the three Kings and how the tragedy unfolded and led to WW1.
Fast forward 100 years and some of the same tensions remains. Yugoslavia split up in the 1980’s/1990’s leading to the tragic war in the region, with atrocities on all sides. Serbia took the brunt of the blame for this, rightly or wrongly, and then again, in the first decade of the 21st century, NATO bombed Serbia in order to support the secession of Kosovo, a historic province of Serbia. The fault-lines of war in this region do not seem to change much and as seen even recently, the tensions over Kosovo erupted once more. Nothing seems to change and maybe this can help us see how the border regions all around the world hold the memories of so many generations. It seems nothing ever really changes and history is destined to repeat itself.