drunk ethnography #1: RECESS

roni goes to RECESS at drumsheds

02/03/2024

My day begins around 8am as I awaken with the excitement of a kid on Christmas day. Today offers two firsts: my first time going to RECESS and my first experiment in drunk ethnography. Despite the excitement I’m ill-prepared for the day so, after a mandatory hour long scroll, I set out to draft some reflections on what I hope my ethnography will look like. This includes research questions, aims, ethical considerations, and a topic guide of questions to ask any partygoers I might pluck up the courage to chat with. Starting to enjoy getting lost in the writing I soon realise I’ve left myself a mere hour to shower, do my hair and makeup and pick an outfit before my friends arrive for pre-drinks. Far too often have I tried to convince myself that an hour is all I need to get ready, and far too often have I been proven wrong. Thank god I’m hosting.

A thick elastic band squeezes my temple as I paint my face with the last dregs of foundation in the L’Oreal bottle I’ve had since I was about 17. Virtually all my good makeup products an brushes rest in a ziplock bag in a studio apartment in Frankfurt, accidentally abandoned there two weeks before when I had hurriedly left Germany so as to avoid extreme FOMO from missing Kelela’s impromptu party in London. But city girls make do. With few options lean into the old school drugstore beauty of my filthy makeup bag opting for thin brows, a powdered cake face, fingerpainted black eyes and gloss for the lips. Suited perfectly to the party’s I <3 LONDON theme I think to myself as I envision the London look of the 00s.

I release the tension from my head pulling off the elastic band to reveal the frontal glued to my forehead. Far from a lace front bandit, the 21-inch, straight, black wig was a conscious decision to fit into the imagined environment of RECESS. This is Black London’s infamous daytime linkup, beloved by a demographic I tend to see myself outside of.

Woe is me, burdened with alterity. (get a grip Roni)

I do not lament my difference from the imagined demographic with their gorgeous bussdown wigs, world renowned “uk black girl makeup”, mea culpa beanies, and CORTEIZ and VLONE T-shirts that signal a more mainstream form of Blackness. Indeed, complaints about the mainstream from “alternative Blacks” too quickly become anti-Black depictions of mindless, unrespectable negroes incapable of possessing depth or complexity. Perhaps I am guilty of this. I find myself self-conscious of how this imaginary will perceive me. As I hot-comb and straighten my hair I remove anxiety over my natural hair from the equation. I ensure that I can focus on experiencing the party without wondering if I’m pretty. I can engage with the RECESS types with whom I share musical interests by minimising physical difference. Anywhere else, any other day I wouldn’t have cared but today I want to fit in - at least a little bit.

Blacks…

Everyone is late. Expected. Mia missed the train because the jeans she wanted to wear arrived as she was leaving. Used to the frequent tubes of zone 2, she had not consider the extra half an hour missing a propuh train would add to her journey. She’ll get here at 2:30pm (an hour after the scheduled start of pres). Mos said she’d arrive at 1:30pm (half an hour after the scheduled start of pres) but it’s now 2pm and I haven’t heard from her. I assume she’s driving and focus on getting dressed until I finally decide to call her at 2:20pm. She’s just parking outside the flat.

By 2:35pm everyone is inside. Mos, her friend Peace, Mia, my sister Ruth and, of course, me. Whilst Ruth whips up a very messy, mojito-style concoction, I pull my overnight Hibiscus iced-tea out of the fridge and dump in some white rum. With all the effort everyone took to get here we only have about 40 minutes before we have to leave. Mos starts doing her makeup in my bedroom (unbelievable) whilst Mia and I drink in the kitchen.

RECESS draws closer and closer. We discuss expectations, exhilaration, and the eye-watering price of our tickets to the tune of the Brazilian funk I play from the living room TV. It is a last moment of enjoying my own musical curation before I find myself at the mercy of the DJs. Nearly £50 is at stake so we better have a good fucking time.

I rally the troops at 3:40pm and we’re off. My trusty Great Northern train provides a peaceful and comfortable journey through North London before we descend into the Underground. Now the party is imminent as we see other Black 20-somethings huddled together drinks in hand shouting to be heard over the screeching train. One voice rises above the rest.

IT’S ALWAYS FUCKING WHITE PEOPLE!

A Black man yells across the train, he looks around 40 years old and has the demeanour of a man fresh from work and pissed off. He is arguing with an unseen enemy - though I now have a clue as to what they might look like. This was my call to begin my work as I swiftly pulled out my phone and sloppily typed notes - the rum was hitting. The interaction strangely puts me physically and mentally closer to RECESS. As the screams increase the pressure underground, the tube inhabitants become increasingly aware of each other. Those of us RECESS bound reach our heads round to catch a glimpse giggling and exchanging wide-eyed looks but it never becomes clear to me the exact reason for the beef. From his worn out disposition and the character of his shouts he appears to be raging at a white world with the tube functioning as an enclosed environment to release his frustrations. In a way it mirrors RECESS as an enclosed space for Black people to potentially release tension on the dancefloor.

The confusion is magnified as we are all forced to exit the tube, now terminating a stop before our own. On the platform the drama continues with the Black man’s shouts intensifying. His adversary is revealed to be a… Black guy? Or is he Asian? I’m not really sure but I reckon he’s Caribbean. The beef ends abruptly as the ambiguous figure leaves the station and we rush to the other platform where our tube is just leaving.

Once we reach Tottenham Hale I’m buzzing. Our ascension from the tube below ground is like a traversal into a new plane of existence where our bodies will do the talking. The RECESS bound, Black people, are now all I see as we file towards the bus that’ll take us to drumsheds. We meet Shaniya outside the station and our community grows. It quickly becomes evident to me, however, that the buzz I was feeling is in fact a burning need to pee. I now inhabit the mounting pressure felt below ground as my desire to arrive at the venue begins to explode from within me. This is compounded by a rage at the THREE GREAT BRITISH POUNDS I was charged to get on the bus the venue had acted as though they were providing for us out of kindness due to the closure of its neighbouring train station for the day.

I don’t know anything about the DJs I just trust that it’s black ppl. 

After the sweet, sweet release of a piss in porta potty, we’re inside. Just an hour before last entry and the day really kicks off. We beeline to the main dance room in this former IKEA warehouse. It’s so huge that the hundreds of people in the room look tiny in comparison. I charge towards the action leading my group to the enticing music but when we arrive I’m disappointed. All these bodies and nobodies moving. The DJ stands atop the stage flanked by a male MC doing everything in his power to get us hyped and female dancer well versed in the dances Amapiano demands.

The music is great, as we had all simply expected from an all Black lineup of DJs. I jump to action immediately moving my hips from side to side as I sing-a-long. Yet it’s as though nobody else in the room hears what I hear. The MC enthusiastically calls out to us but the crowd does not respond in turn. They stand facing the stage head-on but unaffected by it. I dance with my back to the stage, facing my friends for it is them I came to dance with. That is how I spot Ellis who bought a cheaper pre-2pm ticket and has been here a few hours. He comes over to join us as we dance but soon the lacklustre dancefloor and intrigue of the second room pull us all away.

En route to the smaller second room we are met with a huge line as the staff work to prevent overcrowding inside. It seems we were not the only ones to be beckoned by this room. The vastness of the main room is perhaps overwhelming, if it’s not packed wall to wall it seems the space overpowers the people resulting in a lifeless crowd staring blankly at the stage. The second room, by contrast, is bewitching with its exclusivity that leaves a huge line of people clambering to get inside and a single doorway framing a segment of the dancefloor hinting at unknown treasures inside. Half of us opt to queue whilst the other half head to the bathroom and then to the bar.

Casamigos, that’s so niggerish!

On our walk to the toilets we have time to take in our surroundings. It’s difficult to comprehend the fact that drumsheds, with its 15,000 person capacity, is filled with Black people chatting, taking pictures, waiting for friends, buying drinks. My sister and I note how similarly everyone is dressed. I don’t think I could ever fully describe the style but it is highly identifiable as mainstream Black British style. It is not uniform but is recognisable by it’s clean cut and fresh from the store appearance. In this moment we position ourselves outside of the group we find ourselves amongst noting our own distinct stylistic references. Where my sister’s outfit featured motifs of goth and emo subcultures, my own drew on the aesthetics of 00s hip-hop fashion. Both outfits were largely vintage/thrifted fashion. By contrast we understood the majority outside of ourselves to be engaged in the current trends offered by major retailers such that the different outfits blended into one clear uk blacks aesthetic.

Pinterest search results for the uk black aesthetic

Our insistence on remarking on this difference functions to maintain our distance from the majority. Through aesthetics we infer politics and dispositions that we’ve observed online. The style of the majority invokes the typical discourses of the so-called gender wars and a neoliberal line of thinking. I use the term gender wars here not as a trivialisation of discussions of very real misogyny but rather to describe intra-communal conversations across gender that are highly heterosexualised. “Who pays on the first date?” is perhaps the most well-known example of this in which Black twitter users debate what should be the norm of heterosexual relationships - often failing to challenge the necessity of heterosexual norms in the first place. To ask who pays on the first date is to posit that a universal rule should exist at all. To engage in the debate is to discursively reproduce the binary of heterosexualised gender. Where the universal has historically steamrolled over cultural heterogeneity in favour of white Western hegemony, the ubiquity of the uk blacks style then conjures in the mind of those of us outside it an insistence on the universal. However, it is equally the case that through our differentiation we too reinforce the boundaries of ‘us and them’, assuming that those who do not look like us are a homogenous, singularly minded group. How do ‘they’ perceive me? I wonder. Do ‘they’ even see me as different from them? Do they think of me at all?

Weaving through the masses of uk blacks we tow the lines of difference in the “Black community”. Through our presence we assert our common interest that binds us - Black modes of music and dance. Through our observations we reassert the boundaries of difference. With these happening concurrently, the need for and potential existence of a universal Blackness withers away. At RECESS Black people are capable of inhabiting multiple distinct and contradictory worlds at once. I am one of you and I am not. Cultural identity can simultaneously encompass the common experiences and shared cultural codes that constitute “one people” whilst also presenting the deep and significant ruptures and discontinuities among us¹. At RECESS we are both being and becoming. We arrive already the unified Black. We become an inexact, messy Blackness as our differences are amplified by the absence of the othering and homogenising presence of whiteness. This gathering of London’s Black diaspora teaches that we need not erase our particularities for us to stand together under the banner of Blackness. At RECESS we feel out, negotiate and manoeuvre through our incongruences. It should be noted however that whilst this movement was possible for myself, the same may not be the case for those who “too” visibly embody difference - those who are deemed less desirable.

After what feels like hours of bouncing around from bathroom to bar to smoking area to bathroom again, we end up back in the main room. Though the dancefloor had been dull at 4pm, by 7pm it’s a full house. Is it really a day party if it only gets good after dark? I’ll take that as a win for the nightlife supremacists. It’s a classic Black DJ style with the song switching quickly every 30 odd seconds. He seems determined to cram in every last drop of Black cultural output from the last 3 decades into one set. Our bodies have little time to catch up with the shifting rhythms. As one song ends one rushes to figure out what’s up next and move accordingly.

It starts off with US hip hop but soon becomes Caribbean hits. Myself and other Nigerians are evidently lost. It seems for our generation, Caribbean music does not quite have the same ubiquity it did for the older demographic for whom Caribbean music held a major stronghold in the cultural landscape. Everything feels unfamiliar to me and my sister as we sway from side to side awaiting a return to our native Afrobeats which has become the leading diaspora music (other than US) in the West. Mia and Shaniya, our resident Caribbean babes, appear to be having a ball. For them it seems a respite from the African dominated music sphere. I’m lost but happy for them. I’m sure I’d have more fun if the drinks hadn’t worn off. Perhaps another drink is needed. My waistline swirls, though unenthusiastically, until the US rap returns. Old Kanye will certainly bring me back. A taste of Young Thug’s legendary ‘Lifestyle’ revives me and my non-Caribbean peers but it’s short lived. Time for another shift. We march out of the room, I alone rapping along to T.I.’s ‘About the money’ - it takes me back to wired earphones leaking noise onto a quiet bus.

We find ourselves at the Amapiano set my sister had hotly anticipated. The South African house sub-genre has swept through the party scene in recent years with its notorious log drums calling on dancers to hit every beat. Its movements are something of a controlled madness. Eyes roll back in heads as dancers allow the beats to consume them. The key is to move as though it is effortless - though it certainly is not. It’s as high energy as we’d hoped. Red lights flash in the dark stuffy room. I’m sweating in a way I had previously believed impossible. In fact, unzipping my denim jacket to reveal only my one good pink lacy bra and release the heat building on my chest, I’m as naked as I can be without actually taking off my clothes.

OLLY OLLY OLLY? OI OI OI!

I WANNA SEE THE MIGRAINE SKANK!

We dance in a tight circle in disbelief at the music. The Casamigos is hitting. Unlike the stage of the main room that asked us to gaze in awe upon the DJ and performers on stage, here the DJ is shrouded in dark red lights and hidden in away in a cage. We cannot see him, we can hear him. And so, the room is made up of small insular circles of dancers shaking to the beat. My booty pops up and down. The DJ brings only the sounds, it is our job to bring the vibes. He is a serious MC. It’s call and response the whole time. London’s grime appears on a South African beat. I <3 LONDON.

We embody the vicissitude of Black life. Blackness’ constant shifts in location and expression across time. Through this Black creative praxis, for a moment, Amapiano is Black British and in turn Black Britishness constructed as worldliness. Against formulations of the human that position Black people outside of the world, as outside of history, outside of culture, outside of life. On the dancefloor, the DJ and partygoers are cartographers collaborating to map out a Black world in which borders are porous. On this map cultural distinctions exist but are constantly available for absorption and refashioning into new modes and places of being/becoming. The DJ’s sounds are a call to join another world, the dancers respond with glee at the future that awaits them. At RECESS, the world is constructed as Black.

Behind us in our corner of the floor a group of white girls seize space for their own disjointed movements. It is honestly bizarre, they feel like invaders. There are no explicit advertisements of RECESS as a Blacks only party nor are non-Black people barred from entry but it is an unwritten truth that this is a Black space for and by Black people. The organisers, the DJs, the attendees, even a good majority of the venue staff (as is the racialised division of labour in London which sees Black people strongly present in service roles). Black. The notion of the space invader has typically referred to the experience of non-belonging in spaces deemed historically and naturally the domain of white people². In the converse however the domain of Black people is not naturalised as the white domain is - concealing the active exclusion of Blacks. It is explicitly actively produced against this white domain as a place where the othering logic of whiteness is eliminated. Though RECESS may not say ‘Blacks only!’, it embodies this through the perpetuation of Afro-diasporic cultural aesthetics inviting a Black audience to be socialised into these aesthetics.

The RECESS attendee expects the crowd to match the aesthetics. The entry of these girls, whom I can only describe as University of Bristol students (think middle-class ket-heads with rave sunglasses), into this space then reinstates the Othering of Blackness where it should not exist. Here the disorientation that occurs is not born of one’s own non-belonging nor the non-belonging of another but of the reappearance of a strict belonging/non-belonging dichotomy. Earlier, non-belonging we had experienced occurred within the bounds of equal negotiatory positions between Black and Black. The boundaries of belonging/non-belonging though existent were pervious. The appearance of our Bristolian space invaders is not on this equal ground. It raises immediate questions of what could have possibly drawn an all-white group to this space. Is it Black cultural fetishism or snowbunny aspirations or perhaps a complete oblivion to the existence of Black spaces at all? It ruptures the Black map with the impossibility of Black life extended from plantation to colonial metropole. The disorientation is momentary - WAIT MY SONG IS ON. 

By 9pm I’m fucking exhausted. A £6 plate of undercooked chips does nothing to help. We return to the main room one last time, even busier now that the smaller room has been shut for the closing event. I’m truly surprised by the seemingly high energy of everyone else in the crowd. Another point for the nightlife supremacists. Where was this four hours ago? My only concern now is ensuring I don’t get stuck in a fat fucking crowd of people trying to get home. Nightmare. Just as my social battery dies Nigerian domination hits the airwaves. A saxophonist is on stage puffing along to the melodies of the DJ’s music. It reminds me of the Nigerian gospel saxophonist my mum used to play in the car. Wrapped in a grey Nike Tech hoodie I stole from a pub a few weeks back and incapacitated by sudden onset fatigue, I begin to feel like the men that occupy the sidelines of the dancefloor. Leaning on the wall. Watching and waiting for who knows what. Perhaps for the right girl to appear in front of them offering an opportunity to flirt. I can’t help but feel self-conscious of my lack of energy. When the loudest person in the room goes quiet, the whole group notices. I’ve been asked if I’m good one too many times but I’m happy to watch and wait until my friends are ready to call it a day.

RECESS

ENJOY YOUR LIFE

Never in my life have I seen someone bring a full ring light to the dancefloor. This is insanity. The crowd once again stands looking up to the the stage whilst we seem to go through Asake’s entire discography. But my eyes a drawn to the girl a few metres to my left spotlighting herself in the faceless crowd. She films herself on Snapchat dancing and singing - lively yet poised. She makes proof that she was here. That within the Black mass fixated on what happens on stage, there is an individual on the ground. That she lived and she enjoyed doing so.

The music calls my weak body. My desire to respond to the dancers on stage is strong enough that I find myself slowly but surely moving my body to mimic them, to tell them I understand what they are communicating up there. I’ve long held the belief that I have a star quality. That if somebody would just let me on the stage the people would love me. Where I would have viewed women as the primary dancers of the club, as is present on ground, the stage is filled with men showing the crowd their honed in skills. The room responds with the desired cheers. I yearn to be up there with them to prove myself. Looking up at the male dancers I can’t help but feel like the increasing focus on the stage in the club pulls focus away from the interactions on the ground. We all face front and follow the leader. There are no opportunities to grab fame on the dancefloor. 

Unlike our time in the smaller room, the main room prioritises individualism over the community-making process of dancing in smaller groups. The big screen behind the crowded stage reads “Enjoy Your Life” but it is this very stage that interrupts life in the interest of redirecting attention to the select few well-connected enough to stand above us. Indeed, the stage institutes a spatialised hierarchy in which the lowly crowd members are not collaborators in Black creative praxis but passive recipients of creative output. Our culture comes from above, thrown down to us like stale loaves of bread from the king in his castle.

The rise of the stage as a fixture in the club evidences neoliberalism’s ever accelerating creep into every aspect of our lives as our collectivised cultural process is replaced with the capital pursuits of individuals. The DJ moves from curator and archivist, to entertainer from whom we demand a good show. In turn, pursuing a DJ career requires increased navel-gazing. The focus is creating a visual offering good enough to be allowed on the stage - at the expense of the auditory and kinaesthetic collaborations made between DJ and partygoer. The new dynamic is of elusive ‘creative’ and consumer. This creative needn’t to do anything sonically interesting so long as they play everyone’s favourite songs and hypnotise them with a Cocomelon-esque combination of lighting and movement on stage. Perfect for the socials. Perfect for the branding. At RECESS Black creative praxis stagnates. Nothing particularly new is offered, just the reproduction of the cultural norm with bigger and better special effects. At the mercy of the consumer, perhaps the creative fears challenging the consumer’s expectations. Perhaps they are not allowed to. Or, who knows? Maybe they’re perfectly happy with not pushing any boundaries at all.

Burna Boy sings “we say bye bye ohhh” and I seize the opportunity to rally the troops one last time before we are lost in tide of people journeying home. We later discover that doing so resulted in missing the surprise set from London grime rapper, Giggs, but - respectfully - who cares.

I arrive home and feel an overwhelming sense of misery. Maybe it’s the exhaustion. Maybe it’s a comedown from the highs of inside. My body aches especially my back and buttocks for they have carried the weight of my diasporic movement. 

1. Hall, S., 1997. Cultural Identity and Diaspora in McDowell, L., Undoing place? : a geographical reader, London ; New York : New York: Arnold ; John Wiley & Sons. Pp.222-

2. Puwar, N., 2004. Space invaders: race, gender and bodies out of place, Oxford: Berg.