Dear Jake (and other community activists like him), Remember you are an African. You come from a long line of Kings and Queens, of scientists and innovators, warriors, and peacemakers. Yet many Europeans will see you different - see you as a hustler, a big scary black male, a pimp or a knife wielding drug dealer. The colonial past of ‘Great’ Britain still haunts us today. Pervading all aspects of society, particularly and typically covertly - because Britain, you see, always assumes it knows best. Along with its European ‘conquerors’ it is the innovator of structural racism and oppression. Claiming lands for itself, raping, pillaging, and enslaving the people then offering the ‘warm’ hand of ‘civilisation’ to rid you of identity and your own history. But do not be fooled that this is in the past and we have moved on. No…the architecture of oppression is as alive and well today as it ever has been. Don’t just look to America as the ‘shiny’ example of black oppression because Britain is the original ‘master’. With its racially motivated school exclusion system, its gangs’ matrices, PRU to prison pipeline, its structures for mental incapacitation and not forgetting its racist and patronising press (and I don’t just mean the obvious ones folks), watch out brothers and sisters – the architecture of oppression - has a one-way ticket to hell with your name on it!
Remember to hold you head high in the street, don’t be afraid if the cops stop you as you have armed yourself with knowledge of your rights so the officer in question will need to justify his racial profiling, When you are in the board rooms of decision makers and power players don’t be fooled into being the token black person with lived experience who can tick their equality box as you have every right to be in the room full stop. Your wisdom and intelligence will be overlooked because of the way you look but remind them that your ideas were your ideas not theirs. Remember what effect the trauma of oppression has on us.
MRBCD240 The Brkn Record_12pp_booklet_120x120_v2_PRINT.indd 1 07/06/2021 18:01 Don’t let it divide us. Reach out the hand of partnership to your brothers and sisters otherwise competition and division will continue to be our Achilles heel and weaken us. We are not crabs in a bucket but champions on the playing field. Do for Self means more than just you. Remember to treat others like you would expect to be treated yourself – it’s an old adage, but one that speaks volumes. Your partner, your baby mother, is a queen, a manifestation of mother nature herself and, as such, should be treated so. Don’t let the architecture of oppression seep into the fabric of your home life, don’t let it twist a slow knife into your once happy heart for it will affect everything you do and think, if you let it. Don’t just be ahead of the game, be the head of the game. One thing that the system of architecture of oppression hates is when we claim our rightful place at the head of the table.
This is where you will be most impactful. Sure, protest and if need be Fight the Power if it fights you but the devil is always in the detail and that means you need to know where the detail is and be able to shape it accordingly.
You’re a polymath not a sociopath.
You’re a lover not a fighter.
You’re an uplifter not a destroyer.
You’re a doer not a talker.
You’re a thinker not a reactor.
But most of all you are You and don’t let anything hold you back… JAKE
MRBCD240 The Brkn Record_12pp_booklet_120x120_v2_PRINT.indd 2 07/06/2021 18:01 MRBCD240 The Brkn Record_12pp_booklet_120x120_v2_PRINT.indd 3 07/06/2021 18:01 This album, The Architecture of Oppression, created by Jake Ferguson is part of a long history and tradition of activism in Hackney that has helped to shape the lives of Black Britains – people of African and Caribbean heritage - for the better. It shines a spotlight on the structures of racism that have been designed to hold us back as the Global Majority. It is a window into the Black British experience and a barometer of the trauma that the state and wider society inflicts on us – if we let it! The Power of Music Throughout the 1970-80s, people of African heritage faced state-backed discrimination leading to mass unemployment, poor health outcomes, political disenfranchisement and inter-generational levels of social and economic impoverishment. The Rastafarian community, who were often the target of racist policing tactics, often led the way culturally and physically. They were our community guardians on the streets, leading the warrior charge against the racist skinheads1 and off duty police officers that would harass and publicly dehumanise our children and parents. Many of us, especially those of us with Caribbean heritage were denied a platform to articulate our concerns in the mainstream media, so instead, we turned to music to do so.
Through a burgeoning network of independent record labels that had escaped the apolitical trappings of “ska” and “one love reggae”, artists like The Abyssinians released tracks like “Declaration of Rights” in 1972. Their message: “Get up and fight for your rights my brothers, Get up and fight for your rights my sisters”, resonated with us. We knew as Africans in the UK we were part of a global diaspora, often with one foot in Britain and another in our former enslaved and colonised territories. Songs by artists like The Abyssinians and our civil rights campaigning cousins in America like Nina Simone, Curtis Mayfield, Mahalia Jackson and Gil Scott Heron reflected upon a legacy of similar struggles afflicting all our families across the world. Although written about the violent conflict between the people and police in Jamaica, classic tracks like “Police and Thieves” by Junior Murvin in 1976 were imported into the UK and spoke of our experience too.
MRBCD240 The Brkn Record_12pp_booklet_120x120_v2_PRINT.indd 4 07/06/2021 18:01 In this way, the genre of roots reggae gave voice to our collective political concerns. It also schooled many British based musicians of the various creative forms radical resistance to oppression could take.
In 1982, “The Message” by the seminal rap group Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five led the way for Chuck D to characterise his influential hip-hop group Public Enemy as “black America’s CNN”. But none of this was new. The stream of uprisings that occurred across the UK in 1981 was a turning point for the nation. It is crucial to note that they did not occur in a political vacuum despite being depicted in the mainstream media as “riots”. These spontaneous explosions of urban social movements were a definitive memorandum on institutional racism that found the British state guilty of all charges. You see in 1971, Fela Kuti, the father of Afrobeat, had visited the UK to perform and record his “London Scene” album. Fela, who was inspired by the Black Power movement after visiting Los Angeles in 1969, used his craft to promote political radicalism. Prior to this, the live music presented at the annual Notting Hill Carnival since the 1960s had long infused Diasporic African culture and spirituality with politics through Calypso and Soca, to name a few genres.
As a result, another transformation was taking place in UK music studios. Inspired by how an international community of African artists had utilised music as a force for healing and political unity, they started to express their concerns and aspirations in distinctly British terms. In the absence of a Motown and the resources required to manufacture polished romantic odes, they created Lovers Rock. A genre that often spoke of the importance of self-love, political organisation, and unity against racist oppression. Tunes like Brown Sugar’s anthemic Black Pride in 1977 included lyrics that expressed being “proud to be of the colour god made me”. The track would become a hit on sound systems across the UK. Indeed, Caron Wheeler, one of the Brown Sugar members, would later join the UK group Soul II Soul and have a stream of international hits starting in 1989 with the classic track “Keep on Moving”. Moreover, Caron’s solo follow up album “UK Blak”2 articulated the exclusion and political silencing of those with African heritage living in the UK.
MRBCD240 The Brkn Record_12pp_booklet_120x120_v2_PRINT.indd 5 07/06/2021 18:01 It is crucial to remember that all of this occurred against a relentless backdrop of brutish policing, which saw “SUS” laws introduced. This legislation supported the racist harassment of young and elderly members of the African heritage community alike, on the streets and in their homes. Then, following the indifference of the British Government, monarch and media to the deaths of thirteen young people who had lost their lives in a suspicious fire at a party in New Cross Fire on the 18th of January 1981, over twenty thousand people of African heritage took to the streets on the 2nd of March. The Black People Day of action was a mass, peaceful protest mischaracterised by the Sun newspaper as “The Day the Blacks Ran Riot”. However, the community slogan “Thirteen Dead, Nothing Said” failed to motivate the authorities to take their grievances seriously. Moreover, the police launched a racist investigation that targeted the families of those that had perished. With tensions enflamed, by the 10th of April 1981, the community rose up in righteous rage through a stream of uprisings starting on the streets of Brixton.
In response, Hackney would be amongst several London boroughs who took part in London’s 1987 African Jubilee year. It was then that the loca authority first signed a declaration where it opted to become an anti-racist borough. All across London, Labour councils were exercising their duties under the Race Relations Act 1976 to support and recognise people of African heritage by naming streets, buildings and monuments after those who had made historical contributions to Pan-African liberation. Whilst this did not eradicate institutional racism, it helped increase a sense of belonging for those of us who had felt socially alienated and denied opportunities for progress and success irrespective of what career path we travelled.
Subsequently, during the late 1980s, musicians like myself decided to use the limitations imposed by the choice of equipment we could afford to create new music genres in our “bedroom studios”. As a teenager, I had experienced so many negative encounters with the police and the British “justice” system. I like many others, regarded the creation of music on my terms as my only way to escape. Hence, when living in Newington Green and then later Homerton, I started a genre called “Streetsoul” and released numerous tracks on my own record labels - Unyque Artists and Intrigue. At that time, I was politically naïve and just tried to make the music that I wanted to listen to at the blues parties I attended. Collectively we wanted our tracks to be played on the unlicensed radio stations that gave us our community updates and have our tracks written about in the music magazines alongside reviews of our musical role models from around the world.
MRBCD240 The Brkn Record_12pp_booklet_120x120_v2_PRINT.indd 6 07/06/2021 18:01 In Stoke Newington, also during the 1980s, another Hackney-based independent label named Shut Up and Dance run by soundsystem DJ’s Philip ‘PJ’ Johnson and Carl ‘Smiley’ Hyman3 started mixing reggae and sped up drumbeats to pioneer a new form of dance music. The experimental genre would later be given the pejorative label of “Jungle Music” before becoming formally known as a “Drum and Bass” derivative. The media had always attempted to link our music to criminality. We were accused of either inciting it or glamorising it, thus enabling politicians to demand the police shut down our parties and nightclub venues. We just wanted to be free, we wanted to share our reality in musical form, we wanted to dance and make a decent living from our work.
In most cases we were also denied escape from institutionalised racism in the music industry. Even when as artists, we didn’t fall into the category of “gangsta rap” they attempted to link the innovations of newer generations like Grime with issues such as drugs and violent crime. We persisted and with the ability to be totally independent from the bizness, some of us have thrived. Today, more and more musicians from our community continue to challenge Afriphobia through their music, using the technology gains acquired through social media and low-cost video production equipment to bypass industry gatekeepers that seek to block or immorally exploit their message. A new generation of artists like the performers Zara McFarlane and Ayanna Witter-Johnson are bringing classic tracks like “Declaration of Rights” and “Police and Thieves” to a next- generation through their interpretations that use a creative improvisation musical genre otherwise referred to as “jazz”.4
1. Not all skinheads were racists at the beginning of this London based 1960s subculture. The extremist views came later as they pulled further away from populist expressions of counterculture. https://www.britannica.com/topic/skinhead 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyYkKDDI5Sg 3. https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2019/01/shut-up-and-dance-interview 4.The musician Christian Scott Atunde Adjuah defines “jazz” as a pejorative term for African based, creative improvised music.
MRBCD240 The Brkn Record_12pp_booklet_120x120_v2_PRINT.indd 7 07/06/2021 18:01 MRBCD240 The Brkn Record_12pp_booklet_120x120_v2_PRINT.indd 8 07/06/2021 18:01 All which leads me to this album, “The Architecture of Oppression”. A masterful composition created by my friend Jake Ferguson whom I have known for over 15 years. I say know, but my relationship with the brother has been through years of interacting with him as a community leader forged in the long tradition of activism and community organising. Jake lives, dreams and works in a manner that uplifts people of African heritage. Moreover, with these compositions, he has found another way, like our Ancestors, of shining a spotlight on the structures of racism that have been designed to hold us back as a Global Majority. I think I’ve said enough but I want to close be stating that Jakes musical intervention comes at a crucial time in our history to offer us all a window into our experience with the UK. Each track is a notch on a barometer of the trauma that the state and wider society has and will continue to inflict upon us – if we let it! TOYIN AGBETU Toyin Agbetu is the Founder of Ligali, a Pan African, human rights based organisation www.ligali.org
Photo credits (inside gatefold) Top left then clockwise: Colin Roach march - Rio Cinema Archive Ava Ferguson holding BLM placard - Sooze Ferguson Standing off to police - Toyin Agbetu Zara McFarlane - Casey Moore 2011 Riots in Hackney - Alamy photo library Account Group young leaders - Tim Head Jermain and Janette - Sooze Ferguson Dylema - Aiden Howe Photo credits (booklet) - Sooze Ferguson
QUOTE 1 - ‘Handcuff usage in Hackney increased by 158 per cent in the last three years. Black people are 4 times more likely of having force used against them. (Reference: Met police use of force dashboard. www.accounthackney.org) QUOTE 2 - ‘Young Black men are six times more likely than their white peers to be stopped and searched in London. (Reference: Met police use of force dashboard. www.accounthackney.org) QUOTE 3 - ‘The disproportionality in the use of force against black people adds to the irrefutable evidence of structural racism embedded in policing practices’ (Reference: INQUEST https://www.inquest.org.uk/bame- deaths-in-police-custody) BAME deaths in police custody | Inquest Background on restraint related deaths and disproportionate number of deaths of people from black, Asian and minority ethnic groups. In October 2017 the landmark Independent review of deaths and serious incidents in police custody by Dame Elish Angiolini QC was published. Commissioned by Theresa May when she was Home Secretary, the review called for action in tackling discrimination. www.inquest.org.uk QUOTE 4 - ‘The restraint was a viable, logical and reasonable option, In line with MPS and National Policy procedure’. (Reference: IOPC Conclusions into death of Rashan Charles. https://policeconduct.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Rashan_Charles_final_report_FOR%20PUBLICATION.pdf)
MRBCD240 The Brkn Record_12pp_booklet_120x120_v2_PRINT.indd 9 07/06/2021 18:01 1. Assimilation (feat. Dylema) Vocals: Dylema / Drums: Malcolm Catto / Strings: Raven Bush
4. Break the chains Drums: Malcolm Catto / Strings*: Raven Bush
5. A Police Service, not a Police Force (feat. Lee Jasper) Words: Lee Jasper
6. Hackney Ain’t Innocent (feat. Yolanda Lear) Vocals: Yolanda Lear / Drums: Malcolm Catto / Strings: Raven Bush
7. On the Daily (feat Ugochi Nwaogwugwu) Vocals: Ugochi Nwaogwugwu / Drums: Malcolm Catto
8. Say Black (feat. Dylema) Vocals: Dylema / Drums: Malcolm Catto
9. The Babylon Encounter (feat. Janette Collins and Leroy Logan) Words: Janette Collins MBE, Leroy Logan MBE
10. Witness the Whiteness (feat. Adam Elliot Cooper) Words: Adam Elliot Cooper / Drums: Malcolm Catto / Strings: Raven Bush
11. Lifeline (feat. Zara McFarlane) Vocals: Zara McFarlane / Drums: Malcolm Catto / Strings: Raven Bush
Jake plays: bass, guitars, keys, electronics (Buchla, Yamaha CS80, mellotron and Moogs), kalimba, whale harp and other assorted bits and bobs. Strings arranged by Jake Ferguson and performed by Raven Bush unless indicated * arrangement by Jake Ferguson and Raven Bush. Vocalists and spoken word contributions – as indicated above Mixed by: Jake Ferguson Pre mastering by: Malcolm Catto Mastering: Pete Norman, Finyl Tweak Executive Producer: David Buttle, Mr Bongo
MRBCD240 The Brkn Record_12pp_booklet_120x120_v2_PRINT.indd 10 07/06/2021 18:01 MRBCD240 The Brkn Record_12pp_booklet_120x120_v2_PRINT.indd 11 07/06/2021 18:01 The Guys at Mr. Bongo (Dave, Matt, Jane and Chris), Toyin Agbetu for the liner notes, Malcolm Catto for the fantastic drums and warmed up mixes, Raven Bush for the strings and software advice, Egon and Otis at Madlib Invazion for their ongoing support, Ian Chattam for cleaning up the vocals, Raj Majumdar for reviewing the millions of versions, Viv Ahmun and the Black Men for Change network, Account Hackney and Politically Black young leaders, Adiaha Antigha and everyone at Hackney CVS, all the amazing Hackney community people (Janette Collins MBE leads the way!) and all the contributors for their knowledge and inspiration. Dean Marsh for the legal bits and intros, Nick Lawrence for the accounting, and anyone I’ve forgotten to mention…you know who you are!
Big kisses: Sooze, Ava and Nesta – my beloved family and mum and dad for bringing me into the world.
This record is for all the warriors out there fighting for justice and equality. Keep on keeping on! ‘In music there is truth’
MRBCD240 The Brkn Record_12pp_booklet_120x120_v2_PRINT.indd 12 07/06/2021 18:01