{"id":7477,"date":"2021-08-31T12:20:08","date_gmt":"2021-08-31T10:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prod-2018.frictions.co\/?p=7477"},"modified":"2021-08-31T17:35:28","modified_gmt":"2021-08-31T15:35:28","slug":"a-la-recherche-de-lame-de-bristol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prod-2018.frictions.co\/english\/after-the-revolution-now-what-s3\/in-search-of-the-soul-of-bristol\/","title":{"rendered":"In Search of the Soul of Bristol"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I\u2019ve been a fan of Massive Attack since forever, and the city of Bristol has always fascinated me. I dragged my dirty sneakers around there over twenty years ago. At the time, I was writing scribbles for urban culture magazines \u2013 even though I hate that expression \u2013 and I had followed the rap group Sa\u00efan Supa Crew, made up of fun lads who have since separated and gone very different ways. But back to Bristol, early 2000s. The editor-in-chief asks me if I want to follow the UK leg of the Sa\u00efan tour. The group was a critical success abroad. I had just come back from a several week vacation in Morocco. I was opening my dented letter box in the lobby of the Cortina tower in the Olympiades district in Paris when I got the phone call. It was July, and I was more or less single (it was complicated). There weren\u2019t any crying mouths to feed, there was no alimony to pay, the Chinatown towers were rapidly becoming pressure cookers, and I had no plans for the following week. And then there was Bristol. Who could say no to Bristol, even when you would have to sleep in a tour bus heavy with the aroma of overworked and overtired human bodies?
The raw and unadulterated truth, my friends, is that I didn\u2019t see any of it. All I saw of Bristol was a concert venue and a small sleepy road. I spent my time listening to the band do their soundcheck on stage, a word I prefer to the French term balances (audio balancing) which is more heavily connoted. When you\u2019re reporting, you spend ages chatting with the members about everything and nothing, eating with them, and waiting. You\u2019re always waiting for something with rappers. But even the rappers themselves, who are always dog tired, sweating profusely, starving and thirsty aren\u2019t exactly up to a long and in-depth interview after shows. And then there are the managers, the tour manager, the guy from the record label, the road manager, and a few other parasites orbiting around, what we call the \u2018entourage\u2019 in polite society. I\u2019m speaking as a journalist who specializes in musical coverage \u2013 this is hardly limited to the Sa\u00efan Supa Crew. I didn\u2019t see any of Bristol. I wasn\u2019t struck dead by the city\u2019s terrestrial beauty, or by Massive\u2019s abrasive soul. I left in the early morning, on a bus headed for London.<\/p>

But here I am in the \u2018hipster\u2019 Stokes Croft and its somewhat annoying bohemian chic vibe, with Chris, a Deliveroo delivery man by day, and an independent photographer by night, in search of a kind of soul of the city...<\/p><\/blockquote>

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20 years later.
Not long ago, I returned to Bristol. I wanted, in a very pretentious way, to unravel the mystery of the city. The city of Massive Attack, Banksy, Portishead, and Tricky. The world capital of street art, even though I know Vitry-sur-Seine would like to compete for that title. Bristol, the rebel: when the agri-food industry giant Tesco tried to establish itself in the neo-beatnik neighborhood of Stokes Croft \u2013 the super expensive and super progressive thoroughfare of Bristol \u2013 the locals resisted, clashing with the police. But as I stroll up Stokes Croft with my photographer buddy Chris, who is originally from Bristol, I start to feel skeptical. I\u2019m not sure why. It might be because, in gourmet bars, I am offered nouvelle cuisine specialties at 20 pounds per plate \u2013 all served by a tattooed and bearded bistrologer explaining the quantum physics of a perfectly cooked fish \u2013 but I find it to be a bit expensive for a cooking course. I feel like the city is uncompromising. Hear me out \u2013 in my mind, Bristol was the city of freedom and creativity. A city that had produced an entity like Massive Attack could only be that, couldn\u2019t it? But here I am in the \u2018hipster\u2019 Stokes Croft and its somewhat annoying bohemian chic vibe, with Chris, a Deliveroo delivery man by day, and an independent photographer by night, in search of a kind of soul of the city, a multi-sequential vortex that nourished the whirlwind soul of Massive, Tricky, Portishead, and Banksy, left to knock on doors of random people, asking them where we could find Robert Del Naja, the members of Portishead, or even Adrian Nicholas Matthews Thaws \u2013 better known as Tricky.<\/p>

\u201cTabloid journalists from all over the country came to Bristol and offered people crazy money for Banksy\u2019s name and address, but nobody talked. Bristol still stands in solidarity with Banksy,\u201d Chris tells me in between 8 pound teas. At this rate, soon I won\u2019t have a single cent left, and I\u2019ll end up begging for loose change in front of the Hamilton House \u2013 the solar temple of counterculture where you still have to cough up a fistful of cash for a mug of hot water. Or I\u2019ll end up like Angus, a street artist from Toulouse who I got in touch with while I was in Paris, who spends his time painting houses in Bristol in return for payment. Sometimes I do marker drawings of cartoon characters, gangsters with bulging eyes and shaggy hair. It might earn me enough to go back to Paris Sud.<\/p>

Angus is a street artist who is doing pretty well, but doesn\u2019t have the overblown ego or what I call a \u201clicensed wall\u201d complex. Res One, a graffiti purist and member of a group of wild vandal painters in the city, the DBK (Dirty Bristol Kidz), would tell me with no hint of exaggeration: \u201cWe have kids covering the whole city, and who run the risk of going to prison, and then you have all those artists subsidized by the city who draw cute things on walls. That right there is the New Bristol.\u201d According to him, Bristol first started to lose her soul in 2006 when Massive Attack left the local scene, with one of those incredibly tedious business agreements in the phonographic industry that inevitably result in \u2018Best of\u2019 albums \u2013 a polite way of leaving without slamming the door. When did Bristol stop being the best-kept secret in the Kingdom? \u201c2010,\u201d shoots Res One, \u201cwhen they started doing conferences and street art tours for seniors and primary school classes.\u201d
Some of you probably think that Res One is ranting and raving a bit. I like it when cities are covered in colors and pastels, but I still find it ironic when dudes who made vandalism calls to the police reporting graffiti on the fa\u00e7ade of their building now drool over artwork done in tangy and refreshing colors \u2013 like a mandarin sorbet \u2013 probably done by the same vandal who defiled the walls of his joint ownership property ten years ago.
In Angus\u2019 beater with my homeboy Chris, I\u2019m still trying to capture some of Bristol\u2019s soul. Bristol has spoiled me with its quality bud, I cannot deny that the local artists are generous with their aromatic and flavorful weed. But I didn\u2019t come for the pot, I came to find the Gestalt of Bristol.
\u201cCan you take us to Knowles West?\u201d I ask Angus.
\u201cNo problem, mate.\u201d<\/p>

We roll along Raleigh Road for a while, an artsy asphalt artery emblematic of the street art festival Upfest. The enormous shuttered tobacco factory was converted into a hip, festive and alternative location, where there is nothing alternative about the price of beer. A cankerous tongue of tarmac comes between Knowles West and the rest of Bristol. The south-west of the city is a depressing grid of roads and dreary council housing units. I get out of the car like I was born here. That\u2019s kind of my personal method for blending into any urban landscape. The three beefy proles with faded tattoos pacing the block are completely indifferent to my existence. Chris snaps a few shots: even cooler than a burst of trip-hop.<\/p>

The tires of two black kids\u2019 BMXs screech on the worn-out macadam of the silent white ghetto. They remind me of Tricky, who grew up in the middle of a white family, in the same social housing that a single street artist has deigned to tag. Angus and I push open the chain link door to an empty basketball court \u2013 as if the whole neighborhood were a ghost town. Usually, ghettos are loud and full of life, like a legal adult bent on social dislocation. But there are no screaming kids here, no men playing dice or cards, no woman giving their vocal chords a work-out at a negligent or inattentive boyfriend. What kind of inspiration could this neighborhood have given Tricky? The incredible life in this area in the 80s and 90s has died like a murmur in an old man\u2019s toothless mouth, like the Queensbridge neighborhood in Queens, New York. A car rolls up alongside us. It\u2019s likely dealers who want to make a few bucks, thinking that Angus, Chris, and I are informed buyers based on our looks.
Once again, disappointment weighs heavily on my shoulders like a huge backpack.<\/p>

 <\/p>

The pose he strikes is cool, natural, and authentic, like his mother gave birth in a photo booth.<\/em><\/strong>
Cool, naturel et authentique.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>

We return to the center of town with Angus, and Chris and I cross Stokes Croft, heading to the Jamaican suburb St Pauls, into the middle of yardie \u2013 from the Caribbean gangs that ruled the street in the 80s \u2013 territory. I\u2019m walking through the middle of the council estates (the British version of the French HLM), rectangular houses with 5 or 4 stories at their tallest, when I run across a guy with his ass parked on the hood of a brand new German sedan, eating chicken creole from a Styrofoam container.
\u201cEnjoy!\u201d
\u201cThanks, mate!\u201d
I hear the audio of a CD coming from the beater\u2019s stereo system. The speakers are banging.
\u201cNice sound, is that you?\u201d
\u201cYep,\u201d the punk answers, \u201cit\u2019s pure grime*. The return of Bristol\u2019s true sound.\u201d
\u201cCan my buddy take a picture of you? It\u2019s for a magazine.\u201d
\u201cNo problem, man.\u201d
The pose he strikes is cool, natural, and authentic, like his mother gave birth in a photo booth.
Cool, naturel et authentique.<\/p>

He talks about the St Pauls riots in 1980.
April 2nd, 1980, a police raid on the Black and White Caf\u00e9 on Grosvenor Road, the main roadway of the area. This bar \u2013 a haunt for Afro-Caribbean youths is suspected of being the HQ of a major hard drug den. Against a background of tensions with the police, allegations of brutality and racism on their part, the neighborhood erupts. It\u2019s the same story in May of 1987. Once again, the zone reaches boiling point.<\/p>

My new friend\u2019s name is Sparface. He\u2019s trying to make a name for himself in the local scene. Life is crazy. Ten minutes after meeting a guy for the first time and he\u2019s telling you that he\u2019s involved in a murder case between two mouthfuls of jerk chicken.
St Pauls biggest problem? Tenants in private housing are being expelled by real estate promoters into far-away suburbs, because St Pauls is close to Stokes Croft. Rents skyrocketed, sending long-time residents packing. The city hasn't sold them the council estates, thank God, which explains the dealers in the area \u2013 occasionally some of them settle old scores with the help of a 9mm. These little turf wars, Sparface explains, scare some of the households of bohos who ride eco-friendly cargo bikes, but the wheels of gentrification are already in motion. He points at the dreary houses, all the while chowing down on his chicken. \u201cSo far, I\u2019m not affected by it, but that could change! (laughter). The neighborhood still lives up to its reputation. In the 80s and 90s it was really sketchy, up until the early 2000s, artists who came for the carnival were robbed blind in the middle of the street, blades and then guns settled feuds. Gangs were in control of all the streets you can see. Nowadays, there\u2019s only one social center for the whole neighborhood. Kids come home from school and find themselves hanging around in the streets. Before, you could get access to a municipal studio to record your demo, but now it\u2019s more complicated. The city is making budget cuts.\u201d<\/p>

I scan the road, a bit let down. Is the spirit of St Pauls dying?
\u201cWhat do you rap about?\u201d
\u201cI rhyme about crime, drugs, just stuff from my day-to-day life, to be honest. I\u2019m trying to make some cash. I\u2019ll find my way, with or without music, but some guys are getting big in London and on the national level, which gives me hope. Bristol hip-hop is back on track. I rhyme on all sorts of beats, trap**, grime.\u201d
He has just finished up a mixtape, All I Can See where he openly describes daily life in St Pauls. \u201cWe sell coke, pot, all kinds of substances here. That\u2019s easy money. There aren\u2019t a ton of opportunities for kids around here.\u201d
\u201cAnd what about the spirit of Massive Attack? Does Massive Attack\u2019s music still have an influence in the city?\u201d
\u201cWho?\u201d
\u201cThe band, Massive Attack.\u201d
\u201cSorry man, I haven\u2019t heard of them.\u201d<\/p>

My journey draws to a close. In two days, I\u2019ll go home to Paris, likely more depressed than ever. The soul of Bristol won\u2019t be in my luggage. Christ tries to cheer me up by telling me jokes about Bristol. The good old days.
Thanks, Chris.<\/p>

I make this story out to all the people in Bristol who opened their homes, their recording studios, and their neighborhoods to me.<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>

* client en argot<\/span><\/p>

* grime is a genre of electronic music that emerged in London in the early 2000s: It draws influences from jungle, dancehall, and hip-hop.<\/span><\/p>

** trap is a music genre that became popular in the United States in the early 2010s. <\/span><\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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