Ketty Seb @ We Out Here (Part 1)
After a hiatus from Farsang, Seb’s “pierce de resistance” is here, and it's a two-part special. FARSANG sent him to Dorset for We Out Here, a festival curated by the BBC Radio 6 DJ Gilles Peterson
A self described “electronic music oficionado” and “wonkanaught”, billing himself as a “Hunter S Thompson for the horse (and sometimes rhino) tranquiliser generation”, occasional DJ and full time sesh-head Ketty Seb attends raves and writes hard-hitting and courageously honest accounts of his wild and varied experiences at them.
Oh, hello there. As a rapper, it’s not important who, or how cripplingly uncool and probably racist they’ve now become, once said: “guess who’s back”...
It’s been a while since I’ve written for the delightfully obscure Farsang Journal. They seemed hesitant to contact me after my last article, a foray into “live” writing that challenged the very form of journalism itself, perhaps a little too much for the editors' culture-vulture Oxbidge orthodoxy. They have also since rejected an article I wrote for them reviewing Notting Hill Carnival, a piece I respectfully took the time and effort to write entirely in painstakingly accurate Patios so as to honour the community/ies that Carni is really for. Unfortunately, to use the parlance, dem man di neva allow dat. Maybe one day heads will roll and that particularly vibrant, cool and chilled out piece of renegade cultural polemic will see the light of day. Jah blessings dread.
However, amongst all of this push-and-pull confrontation during the heady days of last summer, an olive branch was extended by the self-appointed cultural curators of Farsang. If I attended We Out Here Festival, the “coolest and most culturally interesting festival on the circuit”(anon), and wrote a review of this apparently amazing woketopia for them, they’d pay for all of my ketamine, and maybe my ticket. I thought about this. On the same mid-August weekend, my girlfriend, who I will refer to here as Steven Bartlett so as to protect her anonymity, was attending the dr** & b**s dominated cultural Killing Fields of Boomtown Festival, which I’ve unfortunately attended 7 times. She would be sharing a small 2-man tent with a male friend I’d been assured was almost definitely gay, and thus this was not a weekend where I’d be in Steven Bartlett’s inescapably erotic company. I didn’t have other plans. But We Out Here? I’m neither an irresponsible parent nor a “world music” fetishist. What could it possibly have for yours truly? The festival is also, in truth, the big, self-aggrandising party of 6-music DJ and record-label owner Gilles Jérôme Moehrle MBE, better known as Giles Peterson. Founder of the festival, “curator” of its line-up and evident apologist for imperialism, it’s also not entirely irrelevant to say Peterson truly does have a face for radio. Situated at the appropriately named Wimborne St.Giles in Dorset, I’d be surprised if 1 in 5 of those employed at the festival aren’t also called Giles, an unforgivably atrocious name even if he is surprisingly French. I’m as certain that this festival isn’t for me as much as I wish Sophie Ellis Baxter had indeed been murdered on the dancefloor.
But then I consider the offer on the table from the fellas at Farsang, and acknowledge the gaping hole in my summer plans and/or life in general. They would be paying for my ketamine. And, amongst all of the so-called “world music” and “jazz” and “hip-hop” and “dub reggae” and “funk” and “soul” and “d**m & ba**, trailblazing female DJ Josey Rebelle would be playing a rare slice of techno, the only music genre that matters and thus doesn’t need inverted commas around it. In an ideal world I’d have gone to Houghton or some other techno-fest of big-bass-omnibenevolence, perhaps Dekmantel in the Netherlands. But, and this is an objectively wise thing I’m about to say, the world is rarely an ideal world. Off to Wimborne St Giles I would go.
Upon arrival in sunny Wimborne St Giles on the coach from London Victoria it must be said that navigating cues and security was surprisingly easygoing and brief, although I remained grateful to have all 12 grams of tranquilliser rammed firmly up my rectum. Why risk these things? However, I learned something interesting when carrying my tent to an appropriate spot to pitch it. I should point out at this point that, despite coming alone to We Out Here, I had a 12-man tent entirely for myself that took the overall weight of my belongings, anus-stuffed ketamine included, to something probably approaching 200 kilograms. While some may argue that a 12-man tent for what is by all intents and purposes one man is excessive, I wanted to ensure I had a pod for sleeping, a pod for writing full of about 20 portable chargers and my laptop, a pod for eating crisps and fruit, a pod for snorting ketamine in, a pod for meditating/yoga after snorting ketamine, a pod for lovemaking kept spare in case Steven Bartlett changed her mind and came to join me here, and 2 spare pods for luggage. The site wasn’t especially big, but it was important I covered every yard of it before settling for the perfect spot. However, with this titanic weight on my shoulders, thoroughly choosing where to pitch became a monumental physical challenge, and I found myself falling, struggling with this near 400 kilogram weight of luggage. I fell 3 times, interestingly the same number of times Jesus fell carrying his own cross to be crucified on during the 12 Stations of the Cross. Without suggesting that I am Christ, which isn’t really for me to say, was I carrying my own cross to be crucified on in the form of a 12-man tent in this palpably appalling place? Quite possibly. But the interesting thing I learned, in this apparent woketopia and hippy paradise of supposedly peace, love and pubic hair fixated do-gooders, was that no good samaritan came to help me as I fell. I was clearly surrounded by Pontius Pilates-instructors instead.
To my horror I found the the Thursday night at the festival a staggeringly d**m & ba** heavy affair. At various stages Nia Archives, LTJ Bukem and Tim Reaper all try their hardest to elevate this BPM or “genre” that’s tailor-made for utter morons, but it’s like Sisyphus trying to push that massive stone up a hill. It’s one thing beholding a swivel-eyed gurning teenager getting loose to this drivel, but middle aged men in floral shirts with children on their shoulders bopping to jungle makes you want to call social services. I retire to my tent early to sniff, write and attempt some downward dog in the respective pods for such activities.
Friday morning brings with it a brisk cold water naked swim at the small lake on site, as is my right. I get some funny looks and start to truly understand the level of hippyocrisy on display here from these so-called free thinkers and anything-goers. As one wanders around the relatively small site, still naked, you realise there is somehow everything here - a record shop, dodgems, East African food, a lake, two forests, a “healing” section - save for a refuge for the poor children that have been dragged here by their Fela Kuti fellating parents or God forbid some techno for people who know what good music is. As I wait to fill up my pre-ketamine-laced water bottle an unbearably chatty young woman in the cue asks me if I’m planning on seeing Kyoto Jazz Massive at the mainstage that afternoon. Before I can formulate a reply that allows me to pretend I know who they are, an eavesdropping, eternally smug tosspot with a risible beard turns around and informs us that they are “Japanese legends, actually”. Cheers for that, mate. Still naked, I decide to literally hiss at him in the manner of a cat who votes Conservative while maintaining intense eye contact, and he turns back around (as does everyone else in the cue). This course of action is a practice I’ve engaged in regularly since school and never fails in getting the desired effect.
After putting on some clothes and beginning the day's rampant ketamine crusade I head back out to the site, actively avoiding Kyoto Jazz Massive with the assistance of the ©Woov App. Instead, I head to the Rhythm Corner stage, supposedly for electronic music, and yet am witness to DJ sets supposedly celebrating 50 years of hip hop. MF DOOM is played precisely once, so I’m not sure about that. Amongst a sea of lobotimised head-boppers I look up at the chancers playing the most commercial of A Tribe Called Quest from the decks and am beholden by a man I recognise looking out over the crowd, smiling. Of course. It’s Giles Peterson. He’s actually got a couple of other sets this weekend too; God forbid this maniacal narcissist wouldn’t himself be playing at (Wimborne) St Gilesfest. I look at this smiling middle aged man in his funky shirt looking out over the crowd at his own festival and it is the image of pure malevolence, like Kim Jong Un or Darth Vader sinisterly watching over their evil totalitarian empire/s. It shakes me to my core and I leave the Rhythm Corner.
Its an image I cannot shake from my mind for the rest of the day. I ramp up my ketamine use, thinking this may help, but it only makes it worse, multiplying this image of Peterson twofold, tenfold, over and over, until everything is Peterson’s evil grin. Ghanian highlife group Alogte Oho & His Sounds of Joy seem to delight all of the shamelessly dancing cultural appropriating African music fetishists around me, while I stand, motionless, screaming inside my own head. Dr** & ba** godfather, recent subject of a dubious University Challenge question and bona fide twazzock Goldie’s headline set is a similar experience, where yours truly is surrounded by utterly unrelatable enthusiasm. Inner City Life through a shoddy soundsystem would unimpress me at the best of times, let alone when I’m as disturbed as now. Even Omar S’s Detroit house, which would normally be closer to something my finely tuned ears could appreciate, leaves me cold at the end of the night, my mind on other, graver matters.
The next day is no better, if not worse. The naked swim cannot shake it, and I spend much of the day in a strange feedback loop in the 12-man, going from pod to pod. Ket, downward dog, fruit, write, ket, downward dog, fruit, write. I try calling Steven Bartlett but to no answer. Meditating is utterly impossible, the deep unrest within me almost causing me to give in to temptation and drop kick one of the many children who run around the site in the daylight hours. Something’s not right.
I do go and see Nubya Garcia on the mainstage that evening. To her credit, Garcia manages to perfectly merge the genres of “nu-jazz” and “dub reggae” while looking absolutely ravishing and seemingly saving someone in the crowd's life, rushing medical attention to a collapsed festival goer. While all this is to be applauded, I can’t help but wonder why this individual collapsed and if Peterson had anything to do with it. We’re told that headliner Rosiin Murphy has the sniffles and has thus pulled out of her slot that night, but we are instead to be treated by the middle of the road, utterly basic so-called “DJ” Bonobo.
As the ketamine did loop-the-loop’s and Catherine Wheels in my massive brain and I watched Bonobo pedantically pedal through the motions of a disco-house dull-fest of low-BPM mediocrity, as I pictured Peterson sitting in his ivory portacabin rubbing his stunted little hands together absolutely loving all of this like a 6-music Chairman Mao, what I needed to do hit me with an astounding clarity. A terrifying, inspiring, road to Dalmatian moment of reverse-ego-death wondrous clarity. My purpose at this festival was clear. There are bystanders to evil and there are those that choose to stick their head above the parapet and fight it. I needed to kill Giles Peterson.
To be continued…
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