DJing – GEORGE LUKE

The weather may not have been as pleasant as it could have (I should’ve known the heatwave wouldn’t last; this is England, after all), but that didn’t stop Africa Oyé 2018 from being one of the best ones I’ve attended – either as a reviewer or as a guest DJ.

I do enjoy wandering about Sefton Park (especially when the weather’s good – but we’ll say no more about that), and the opportunity to spin a few tunes for the assembled masses is always welcome. I had a great time on Saturday interviewing the Ghanaian singer and activist Rocky Dawuni and the Senegalese singer Marema.

My DJ set on the Sunday afternoon was one of the most personal sets I’ve ever played. Having realised a few weeks earlier that I would be DJing on Father’s Day (my first Father’s Day without a father), I’d decided to turn my DJ set into a tribute to my dad.

I kicked off the set with an old favourite of Dad’s: ‘Joromi’ by the legendary Nigerian guitarist Sir Victor Uwaifo. Later on, I played a track called ‘Harmony’ by rapper/beatboxer/playwright Homecut (aka Testament), taken from his album No Freedom Without Sacrifice. Over a nice Highlife rhythm (the kind Dad really liked back in the day), Testament tells the story of his life growing up with a Ghanaian mother and an English father. His parents never categorised their offspring as ‘mixed race’; instead they described them as being ‘harmony’. Being in an interracial marriage myself, whenever I hear this song, I like to think that one day, it’ll be my kids writing poetry about their upbringing and sharing it with the world. Also, the song namechecks ET Mensah, who was one of Dad’s favourite artists. I think he would have liked that. With ‘Joromi’ representing the past and ‘Harmony’ the future, we had a little ‘circle of life’ thing going.

Next on the DJ stage was my good friend Geli Berg, aka DJ Mayeva. She turned the “awww” factor up to 11 during her set by introducing my wife Karen and I as “a lovely couple whose wedding I played at last year” and dedicated a song to us. Suddenly it felt really sunny.

In between doing interviews, taking pictures and, of course, DJing, I did manage to catch a few of the live sets. Orchestre Poly Rhythmo were brilliant, all dressed in red and white, they crossed genres seamlessly and vibed really well with each other. Sona Jobarteh on Saturday was cool too, wielding her massive kora like Thor’s hammer. Kasai Masai’s soukous grooves got everyone dancing. And Sunday’s headliners, Inner Circle, were out of this world. I can’t think of a single reggae song that was popular in the 90s which didn’t find its way into their set in some form. An awesome live act – but then they have been doing this for 50 years.

And that was my Africa Oyé 2018. See you in Liverpool next year…

Inner Circle’s front man, Trevor ‘Skatta’ Bonnick

Ten days.

It finished serving its actual purpose five days ago. But it’s still here, jostling with my watch for wrist space, now serving a higher purpose of reminding me how great the August Bank Holiday weekend was.

And it appears that I’m not the only Greenbelt punter who develops this weird emotional attachment to their festival wristband and can’t bring themselves to cut it off the moment they’re off the festival site. Friends and I have joked about it on Twitter, where some crazy “let’s see who can leave theirs on the longest” contest seems to have started. Ten days is the longest time mine’s been on for. It may come off tonight – but then again it might not. And why should it? As I said before, reminding me of how great Greenbelt was is as worthy a duty as getting me in to things on the festival site – especially now that I’ve washed away all traces of the mud I brought back…

gbmud — At any minute, I expected Shrek to show up and yell at us to stay off his swamp…

Greenbelt 2012 was by far my muddiest Greenbelt. But unlike Greenbelt ’92 (which held the record until this year, and which I’ve declared my worst ever, after falling into some mud on my first night and not recovering), Greenbelt ’12 was truly awesome despite the mud. Infinitely muddier than ’92, but a much more joy-filled experience.

It was also my busiest Greenbelt. When I wasn’t interviewing performers and speakers for Surefish, I was either being filmed (for a promo video that should be out soon), DJing (which I did three times over the course of the weekend) or fretting over how well my short talk for GTV (on the topic “How to be a DJ”) would go.

The talk went well, thanks for asking. It would have gone even better from my point of view if I’d stuck to the script all throughout – but that’s me being my own harshest critic. The feedback I’ve had has all been good (especially the 12-year-old girl who found it “inspiring”; I do hope I’ve inspired a future Annie Nightingale!). The scariest part of it for me was doing the live beatmatching demo – but I nailed it first time, which was good.

Of all my DJing gigs over the course of the festival, the Friday night silent disco was by far the most surreal. For a start, you were DJing with two pairs of headphones on (you can’t do the “one ear on, one ear off” thing because there’s no sound from the speakers in the room). And of course, you immediately can’t tell who’s listening to you or to the other DJ – except for those odd occasions when the ones who are start singing along to what you’re playing. I now have a video clip on my mobile phone of a tent full of people singing “Where’s Your Head At?” after one such moment.

Hard at work, Silent disco DJ-ing (Photo taken by Elaine Duigenan)

While I may not have seen all the speakers and gigs I’d wanted to (Frank Skinner and Bruce Cockburn being just two of the many I wanted to see but missed), I was able to chat to a good few of them in the Press room. It was nice meeting Richard Coles in person, having become Facebook friends with him earlier this year. Bruce Cockburn, Tony Campolo and Steve Taylor were all in fine form. Abigail Washburn offered to hold my mike for me when she noticed that my energy was beginning to sap – lovely woman she is.

Other memorable moments? Simon Parke’s talk on solitude; Hope & Social in their blue blazers, running around the Mainstage (“the Hope & Social Workout”, they called it); bumping into Chris Hale from Aradhna in the beer tent on the first night, and us subsequently chatting over pints of Crazy Goat until 1am; seeing the Proclaimers from both backstage and the front; Bobby Bovell introducing me to his dad after his gig on the Canopy Stage… and the blind guy I met at Cheltenham Spa train station on Tuesday morning, who overheard Simon Cross and I talking about the festival and joined in the convo to tell us how much he’d loved Sugarfoot’s Performance Cafe gig on Friday night.

I say it every year (well, apart from 1992): Greenbelt was excellent this year. And if a little strip of grey plastic evokes all those good memories a little longer, then that’s no bad thing. Maybe I could just leave this wristband on for another ten days…

Tag Archives: DJing

Africa Oyé 2018/Father’s Day

Greenbelt 2012