Carl will be contributing regular posts as we go through the year exploring a huge variety of alternative musical genres, well away from the beaten track... thanks in advance to Carl for expanding my personal musical horizons.
It blew up.
It is now a way-marker on Britain’s musical trajectory.
With its opening line ‘London Calling, speak the slang now’ the song became an early 2000’s anthem to the street life of the city of London, but the roots of the tune's sound lay partly some 170 miles north of London in the South Yorkshire city of Sheffield. This is where it was recorded: in a small ‘home-grown’ studio sitting just off the city’s London Road.
With its opening line ‘London Calling, speak the slang now’ the song became an early 2000’s anthem to the street life of the city of London, but the roots of the tune's sound lay partly some 170 miles north of London in the South Yorkshire city of Sheffield. This is where it was recorded: in a small ‘home-grown’ studio sitting just off the city’s London Road.
It was here with Russ Orton and Pulp’s Steve Mackey aka ‘The Cavemen’, that the clanking beat of Galang was honed onto MIA’s Roland CC-505 composition.
The Sheffield clank is a sound that helped shape Sheffield’s musical identity in the late 80s. When the aptly named Sheffield musical collective ‘Forgemasters’ released in 1989 the seminal ‘Track with No Name’, which is widely credited as being one of the first techno records to gain any recognition in the UK, the clank was the rhythmic pulse of the track.
The Sheffield clank is a sound that helped shape Sheffield’s musical identity in the late 80s. When the aptly named Sheffield musical collective ‘Forgemasters’ released in 1989 the seminal ‘Track with No Name’, which is widely credited as being one of the first techno records to gain any recognition in the UK, the clank was the rhythmic pulse of the track.
This was also the starting point for Sheffield’s Warp Records, (the 'Track with no Name' having catalogue number Warp 001) that has evolved into becoming a leading film production company aside from having a back catalogue of techno, drum and bass and abstract beats second to none.
As Winston Hazel, an original member of Forgemasters and celebrated Sheffield DJ, sets out, place was intrinsic to the evolution of this sound and Winston also insists it is spelt ‘clank’.
“The drop hammers from the Don Valley used to ricochet 24 hours a day. The sound used to bounce up the Valley and bounce off the hills and every hill you heard it from had a different resonant sound, and when the 700 ton drop hammer went off you could feel it in the air. You’d hear the sound at night-time, you’d go to sleep to it, and wake up to it and whenever you went into a studio to make music you had recognition of that. You’re a product of your environment and your music is as well”.
My dad: Alf Parkinson was a steelworker throughout this period, working at Templeborough, Steel Peech and Tozer and Meadowhall, then over to Parkgate. I remember dropping him off to work with my mum in the 1970s and seeing the sparks from the blast furnaces spewing out as he walked up the slope and into the mill. (AP)
MIA is also very much a product of her environment as well.
“The drop hammers from the Don Valley used to ricochet 24 hours a day. The sound used to bounce up the Valley and bounce off the hills and every hill you heard it from had a different resonant sound, and when the 700 ton drop hammer went off you could feel it in the air. You’d hear the sound at night-time, you’d go to sleep to it, and wake up to it and whenever you went into a studio to make music you had recognition of that. You’re a product of your environment and your music is as well”.
My dad: Alf Parkinson was a steelworker throughout this period, working at Templeborough, Steel Peech and Tozer and Meadowhall, then over to Parkgate. I remember dropping him off to work with my mum in the 1970s and seeing the sparks from the blast furnaces spewing out as he walked up the slope and into the mill. (AP)
MIA is also very much a product of her environment as well.
Born in South London and then raised in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, after her Tamil activist parents moved back to Sri Lanka, eventually the family returned as refugees from the brutal civil war that engulfed Jaffna. MIA’s sound is a fusion of those experiences and places and draws on the hybridity of music that filled the streets of South London.
Although some might hesitate to afford Galang with its up-front sass, bleeps and clanking a deeper musicality the jazz pianist Vijay Iyer unlocks its rhythmic melodies in virtuoso fashion.
Although some might hesitate to afford Galang with its up-front sass, bleeps and clanking a deeper musicality the jazz pianist Vijay Iyer unlocks its rhythmic melodies in virtuoso fashion.
Iyer is not only a Harvard Professor of music and celebrated jazz pianist but like MIA his family’s roots are in Sri Lanka’s Tamil community, in his case transposed to the USA.
On his 2009 album 'Historically' he hammers his way through a masterclass of syncopation, rhythm and flow as he lays out Galang’s propulsive core minus any lyric content. It is startling modern jazz.
Yet MIA’s lyrics are central to the song's essential sense of place.
Yet MIA’s lyrics are central to the song's essential sense of place.
This is multicultural South London, mashed up and drawing on a myriad of musical influences and with MIA’s practiced Tooting drawl. It really couldn’t have been from anywhere else – except it was,
Sri Lanka via Sheffield and then marinated in South London's streets and clubs.
“Girls say what what.”
“Girls say what what.”
Carl Lee is retired but was a lecturer at The University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University, taught A level Geography for 20 years at Sheffield College, is the author of five books about geography and has a PhD in economic geography. He has been nuts about music since buying his first single in 1973: 10cc’s 'Rubber Bullets' if you were wondering.
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