How often have you heard “the devil has all the best tunes”? Well most cliches have a grain of truth to them, but in this case and after exhaustive research I’d say the devil is losing on the musical quality front.
This year’s theme of Love & Hate is a musical trick or treat, sweet and sour. A black and white endeavor for myself and Ruth Barnes who put this year’s DJ set together. Yes love and hate are two very important emotions when it comes to music, because those two sentiments are the bedrock of popular music since it’s inception. Fact!
Love, for obvious and heartening reasons, tends to be the winner when it comes to quantity of tunes in popular culture and for the most part, I would take a rough guess, most of us will find more love then hate in our personal record collections. A good thing I hear you say, but for this year’s Insulting Cabaret DJ set we took a journey into the musical world of hate. Demonisation, racism, misogyny and bigotry are all there entwined in the words and harmonies of music from London to Tokyo, from Country to Reggae.
Myself and Ruth being pretty left-leaning, well-intentioned liberals, have to say from the outset that our record collections were not places to find a whole lot of hate. Throw into that the fact that we hold dearest to our hearts the diversity and mix our our beloved Hackney here in London. That our friends and family come in all colours and creeds, faiths and physical shapes. So listening to the bile and festering hatred in some of our selections has offended us as much as we hope it offends you. Be warned.
Take a collective deep breath and prepare to be challanged at this year’s Insulting Cabaret (no false advertising there).
Jason Phipps & Ruth Barnes
Posted on Tuesday, 13 April 2010