drunk ethnography #2: EDGING
roni goes to CRYSTALLMESS' first night of residency at colour factory
12/04/2024
I must admit I’m nervous writing this.
This might be my most highly anticipated event of the year. Crystallmess, the now iconic Parisian DJ from #that Frank Ocean Coachella performance, announces her club night in London and every black queer clubber in London knows where they need to be on Friday night. Contrary to popular belief, or wishful thinking (you know who you are), I am actually not queer. This is my coming out post! We’ve all seen the pictures, Roni’s boyfriend of 5 years is a cisgender white heterosexual male and her relationship for the most part shows no signs of slowing down. I literally just have a septum piercing. That said, after one assigned reading of Hortense Spillers’ infamous Mama’s baby, Papa’s maybe I came to the conclusion that my gender is Black. What does that mean practically? Fuck all, but perhaps that is the nature of gender. I’ve recently taken a liking to jokingly referring to myself as politically black queer - think political blackness - in reference to my friendships with largely black queer people and affinity for black queer culture. Indeed, a good deal of my last ethnography was spent contemplating a highly heterosexualised space and my own disdain for this. As such, a great deal of my excitement about this party was that I would be surrounded by people with whom I share an interest in experiencing and creating dance spaces that prioritise black creativity that is not so easily accepted in the mainstream - especially in electronic music where black people as pioneers and change-makers have been continually erased. Even without knowing exactly which friends and internet personalities would be in attendance I had a sense that I already knew exactly what the crowd would be like and I couldn’t wait.
The morning of the event I woke up as eager as a kid on Christmas morning. After a gym session, I headed to my local charity shop owned by a Nigerian lady who always looks pleased to see her biggest spender. After picking up some bright pink tights and a cream-coloured, fur waistcoat to pair with my newly purchased beige Isabel Marant sneaker heels, I returned home with the assumption that I would spend the day working on my thesis proposal due in exactly two weeks before getting ready and heading to pres. In reality, the allure of the living room flat screen TV was far too great and I ended up sporadically flicking between watching Shogun (goated), then doing a little writing, then watching Fallout (meh), then doing very little work, then watching Invincible (we’re so fucking back) before finally deciding to spend the next 2 hours replicating a 2010s-esque makeup look I’d seen my MUA icon, Ana Takahashi, post recently. Once dressed around 7pm, I hopped on a train to Rojin’s student accommodation where we’d be having pres. I’m aware that 7pm sounds very early but please understand that I required plenty of time to arrange the necessary equipment for the night ahead.
Keeping with the 2010s motif present in my outfit, arriving at Rojin’s accommodation complete with a slightly cramped ensuite bathroom and miniature kitchen area felt reminiscent of what I assume preparations for a night out looked like for people who actually went to parties in their teens. I watched as Rojin and her friend, Claude, visiting from the US hurriedly tried on different outfits exchanging advice on appropriate styling and makeup. In the meantime, I filled up on the tequila they’d brought from duty-free during their recent excursions to Sweden and France. After a few outfit changes, they were ready so I headed outside to pick up supplies for pre-drinks.
If not for Rojin hosting us we’d have been left to drain our bank accounts drinking in a spoons. Everyone lives with their family. The housing crisis has killed pre-drinks! In the common room, we gathered on the sofas soundtracking our evening with a shared Spotify Jam on the TV. I was briefly concerned that I was already too drunk off tequila at only 9pm when I still had to last til 4am but this soon passed as a sweet, slowly consumed bottle of Desperados balanced out the extremity of several shots with no chaser. Thank god I recently forced myself to start drinking beer. Our outing was something of a birthday celebration for my sister’s 23rd the day before so her friends and mine trickled in slowly over the next few hours.The collision of multiple groups brought together by our sisterhood was audible as the aux shifted from girly pop anthems to multiple songs from the second and far less compelling instalment of Future and Metro Boomin’s collaboration - courtesy of our resident cishet black man, Ellis. But as the drinks flowed, the collision became more a convergence and mingling became easy.
I would’ve liked to stay in that common room a little longer but, unfortunately, few people seem to grasp that if you buy your ticket when an event is first announced it is always cheaper than waiting til you feel ready to purchase them at which point tickets are sure to have nearly doubled in price. The few wise to this were lucky enough to get cheap entry before 1am tickets but the majority rules so we were all forced to race out to make it before 11:30. I’m not a fan of democracy. We gathered on Liverpool Street serenaded by a street busker that reminded me of Cher Lloyd (I still have not decided if that is derogatory) though she was probably too young to even know who that is. Now the drinks were hitting. We shuffled around at the bus stop as though the sounds of the distant club beckoned us to move.
Sometimes there is no why, I just did
On the bus I found myself conscious of ensuring I actually did my ethnography. Maybe that is destructive to the production of the ethnography itself. I found myself looking for insights when I realised I hadn’t written nay notes. Listening intently, looking out for any interesting interactions, racking my brain for analyses. I became concerned by the potentially extractive nature of studying my own friends. To be an emotional gangster. Skulking around, notes app holstered, ready to pluck people from their real lives and paste them unceremoniously into a shitty (amazing) blog. Author of Feels right : black queer women and the politics of partying in Chicago, Kemi Adeyemi, reflects upon her ethnography of black queer nightlife by arguing that ethnographers often place minoritarian life within an ‘event-potentiality matrix’. Put simply, by observing every act by black queer people as potentially groundbreaking and transformative we burden them with being extraordinary and in the process miss the ways both pleasure and violence are entangled in ordinary everyday life. So I stopped asking why. Embodied or carnal ethnography means immersing yourself in the feeling of the field, doing rather than asking.
I’m drunk and I’m kinda horny (I didn’t say that)
The journey is as much the party as the dance floor. After filling the top deck of the bus with a chorus of happy birthday to my sister’s satisfaction, I led our amorphous group into the streets. Every group I find myself in yearns for a leader, I merely answer their call. Prancing through the streets, it feels like a real adventure through London. The type you imagine reminiscing on in your 40s. Quick piss in the park, across the roundabout, descending the sloping road towards the canal, run over the graffitied bridge feeling the cool flashlights of digital cameras behind me, stroll past a far less interesting looking party, polish off the last of the pregame supplies, colour factory right ahead. It’s nearly 12 when we hop into the queue but is it really that deep? “Not my problem anyway”, I told Ola as I advanced towards ticket inspection. One of the people scanning tickets said they loved my outfit. In response I proudly lifted my leg to reveal the star of the show. My new sneaker-heels, a divisive new staple in my wardrobe. I’d had a pair from New Look when I was younger, now the trend cycle has moved fast enough for me to be in a pair from the original designer. You either love them or you hate them. My inspector loved them and I knew they would. Like you have to be very big brained to understand babe… It’s those unspoken and assumed understandings that brought me here - alongside the music of course.
Inside, the crowd is scarce rather surprisingly as I would’ve expected that many of the attendees would be like my disorganised friends with pre-11:30 entry. I imagined they were all late and hoping the entry times were more suggestion than fixed schedule. Time is colonialism or something. I immediately noted a disappointing presence of white people. Not even ‘cool’ whites. ‘Hip to the scene’ whites. Just regular co-working space, marketing and pr job, millenial whites who looked like they’d rocked up to this well-known fixture in Hackney Wick’s nightlife hoping for a good night out without so much as a scroll on the venue’s Instagram to see who or what would be playing. I needed a £7.50 (!!!) pint of nondescript beer.
After recovering from that consensual mugging, we made a beeline for the smoking area. Truly, colour factory’s greatest treasure is its warmly lit garden replete with as many picnic benches as could possibly fit in the space. To be able to sit down at the club is a blessing. I might have reached peak popularity, this will have incredible effects on my inflating ego. Outside was one hello after another. All smiles out of which elation bubbled to the surface.
Good to see you!
I can’t wait for your party next week!
This is my friend Raj, he’s also a DJ!
He’s 29 isn’t that insane!
I don’t know what else to say that’s the extent of my capacity for introductions, now talk amongst yourselves.
Back inside, Detroit ghettotech trio HiTech prepared to hit the stage so we rushed to the front row in anticipation of the supposed bottle of Henny they’re known to pass around to the crowd.They absolutely delivered on their promise of a sexy ass, ghetto ass night. Titties was bouncing. Asses was shaking. Niggas was moshing. All in response to Melly and Milo’s commands over 47Chops supply of beats. Blessed/cursed with big boobs and minimal ass my efforts were naturally focused in my upper body with any and all movement rippling through my unusually bare chest. I found myself front and centre flanked by Rojin, fully overcome by the energy of the music, and Ola the twerk queen of the night throwing it back in her red tartan mini skirt and bright green tights much to the delight of the crowd and performers alike. As Ola’s booty popping rightly drew attention from an eagerly encouraging crowd of mostly black people and people of colour, I couldn’t help but notice a small party of white folk just to her right. They were at the front with us but certainly weren’t participating as enthusiastically. I watched as one gestured to another who was filming HiTech’s show on a camcorder to point the camera down to where Ola was shaking it.
Being photographed and recorded have become an inevitable feature of any motive. The best you can do is pretend these cameras do not exist and go about your night with the hopes that nobody catches you at your worst and posts it for the world to see. I, like many other cool 20-somethings who value aesthetics, had brought my own digital camera to capture the night. A pocket sized, silver Canon PowerShot A410 easily whipped out for a photo of quality to which an iPhone camera simply cannot be compared. There is a certain joy in the way the digital camera forces you to slow down. Taking a single picture requires holding down the button for a few seconds until the flash goes off. To take another, you must wait for the camera to reload for around seven seconds during which the environment may have already shifted vastly or the person posing for a photo and photographer alike have become acutely aware of the artificiality of that moment, of the way the event has been put on hold for the sake of a picture.
I felt a pang of discomfort at that girl’s gesture signalling to ensure they secured the authentic black experience. I could begin a long rant now about the history of objectification of the black body, particularly the buttocks, in human zoos for the consumption of white people but I’m not sure how productive that would be. In this environment, the camera was not a dominating force in the way the gaze of white attendees of the human zoo were. It seemed we were in charge. The encouragement surrounding Ola forced the camera to fade into the background. In contrast to the effortless yet spirited movement of her ass in smooth circles, the camera seemed quite pathetic. A try-hard. An attempt to be part of this moment but evidently too distant to truly be involved. The camera said “I was here” but, peeking out from over the shoulders of dancers, the truth of its participation (or lack thereof) was evident. As her solo performance wound down and attention redistributed throughout the room, I quickly let Ola know what I’d seen. Partly because I felt she should know she had been filmed, mostly so we could laugh.
In my last ethnography I spent some time contemplating the effect of the stage on the vibe. Where at recess a huge stage demanded we direct our attention to the important happenings of those above us, the small stage HiTech bounced around swinging their mics like big dicks and crying out for ass to be thrown instituted no such hierarchy between audience and performer. Their stage was low enough to the ground that it was as though they were on the dance floor with us. The highly anticipated Henny bottle appeared. They poured brown liquor directly into the mouths of the front row baddies and then left the bottle to take on a life of its own being passed around the room. Looking back to keep track of the bottle in the hopes a second gollop, the pockets of lively collaboration I had longed for at recess formed before my eyes. Hands cautiously tilting the bottle to help a neighbour waterfall the warming liquid so it could flow down without spillage whilst also ensuring their turn would be next. Never hoarded, it passed from one to another. Each person seizing their opportunity to get as big a gulp as time and stomachs would allow.
For a moment, fame whore that I am, looking up at Milo stood directly in front of me I had wished I was up there with him. But looking around me I realised I sort of already was. With the circulation of the Henny I could no longer see a clear line between artists and audience. We could all actively coproduce a party for us. Inviting and responding to the thumping rhythm of techno in its true black form. I want to note that this coproduction is not necessarily exclusive of non-black ppl but entails committed engagement with black culture as inherently situated within the world. That is to say black culture does not exist in a vacuum but is influenced by and influential to the cultures it cohabits with. On the dance floor black and non-black people may also collaborate to (re)produce black culture.
These were acts of rememberment, the formation of black identities and cultures in the face of the dismemberment of African bodies and continent that colonialism and slavery entailed1. Rememberment - to remember the creative praxis of the black musicians that produced techno. Rememberment - to re-member, reconstruct a people fragmented, individualised, ruptured by the past through the entanglement of our bouncing bodies thrown together on the dance floor. Rememberment - to reproduce black as a verb. Black - to make life.
In all honesty I couldn’t tell you what I got up to the rest of night. Not because I was blackout drunk, I actually didn’t drink very much - at least by my standards. Rather, because so much time was spent hopping from person to person, smoking area to dance floor and back again, no singular memorable moment appeared. The morning after, a friend who I’d seen that night had sent me a Reel in which an internet user posited that DJs are becoming community builders in our increasingly alienating, individualised society. We concurred that it was exactly how our night at colour factory had felt. A particular DJ can bring out a particular crowd with particular intentions. “Crystallmess at colour factory” had been like a rallying cry. Knowing her music, or simply knowing of the position she fills as a black woman born of the French Hexagon embedded in the Atlantic Triangle of slavery, colonialism and imperialism2 making her mark in electronic music summoned aesthetic, auditory, and kinaesthetic expectations. Chunky jewellery, booty popping, fur trim, fish net tights, all black fits, Sexyy Red techno edits, pouches of baccy, nose piercings, little plastic baggies. I was perhaps the most socially at ease I’d ever been at a party as I playfully weaved together different friends and club acquaintances to form a community I could be cozily enveloped by.
On political black queerness then, the category of black woman has unsurprisingly been the starting point for black feminist theorising but this neither makes it the be all and end all of black feminism nor a category in need of protecting. In Mama’ baby, Papa’s maybe Spillers finds this category to be an impossibility as the unhumanisation of black people on the slave plantation leaves us incapable of possessing gender - a form of categorisation reserved for humans. In this light, she calls for us to abandon attempts to assert the credibility of this category and instead pursue insurgency. The goal is to “flee [the] category of womanhood and also the other categories across the social grid so we can imagine a liberated future”3. I’d like to reiterate that going to the club is not a replacement for active resistance, nevertheless, it is certainly political. My participation and reverence for black queer culture might be this pursuit of a new kind of human against the totalising force of white cishetero-patriarchy. Moving beyond performative disaffiliations with heterosexuality that simultaneously allow straight women to distance themselves from the evils of cishetero-patriarchy whilst doing nothing to change them4, political black queerness implies identification with non-normative ways of being without co-optation. It is recognising common though differently experienced struggle as well as joy. This is not a call for straight women to come to queer spaces and mine queer people for liberation inspiration but to consider the ways we can creatively collaborate in our rememberment.
In the final half hour of Crystallmess’ closing set, the remaining club rats evacuated the smoking area to dance one last time. I pulled myself on stage alongside others who wanted to climb to a new level of the party experience. For that time, I was a star in a star-studded sky.
Gwendolyn, I., 2024. Toni Cade Bambara: I start with the recognition that we are at war. Available at: https://ismatu.substack.com/p/toni-cade-bambara-i-start-with-the
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J., Ndlovu, P. P., 2021. The invention of blackness on a world scale. In Decolonising the Human. Steyn, M., Mpofu, W., Wits University Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.18772/22021036512.
Soumahoro, M., 2022. Black is the journey, Africana the name. English edition. Cambridge, UK ; Polity.
Saidiya Hartman quoted in Bey, M., 2021. Black Trans Feminism. Duke University Press. p.73.