We had no future. So we made a future for ourselves: the untold history of the Welsh reggae soundsystem | Reggae

“Growing up as black people in Wales in the 1970s, we felt isolated from the rest of humanity,” says Lawrence “Tylo” Taylor. “There was nothing for black youth.”

Although Cardiff is home to one of the oldest black communities in the UK, dating back to the 19th century, it can be a difficult place. “When you were kids, the police would mistreat you, call you a black bastard,” Tylo says. “There was pure racism at school, and teachers would target and belittle you. We grew up very disillusioned.”

There was a group of people who felt similarly, looking to find their tribe and identity in Wales. Andrew “Bingham” Baines moved to Cardiff from London in 1970, when he was nine years old. “It was a culture shock,” he says. “I didn’t even know there was a Wales until I moved here.” As a teenager, he visited New York, London and Jamaica and returned changed. Bingham became a Rasta, leaning on his heritage and newfound identity as a “defense mechanism” against turbulent times, and began devouring reggae music. When a friend asked him if he wanted to join his sound system crew, the answer was a hard yes.

Both Tylo and Bingham became players in one of the most unheralded and undocumented music scenes in British history: the Welsh reggae soundsystems. While London, Bristol, Leeds and others were famous for their thundering dub tunes at street parties and dance halls – most famously at Notting Hill Carnival – the “voices” of Wales itself are not so well known. But because of this ambiguity, they ended up cultivating some of the most militant and fiercely proud Afro-Caribbean culture in the UK.

Black International was Cardiff’s first sound system, followed by the Conqueror Hi Power Sound System, created by Gilbert Anthony Watt in 1975. A few years later, Tylo and Gary Jemmett created their own system, Countryman, which, along with other crews such as Lionheart and Emperor, formed a raucous scene. Kervin Julian, who grew up in London and began visiting Cardiff in the late 1970s, and later became part of the Conqueror when he moved there, says it was “very isolated” and felt distinctly different from the capital. “They didn’t have many venues or record stores. There was only chart radio, no pirates. No media. No infrastructure. But it created a community and a sense of belonging.”

The Sound System organizers packed their speaker stacks and traveled to London, Bristol, Birmingham, Gloucester and Huddersfield – picking up new records along the way – to clash with other notable systems, playing to tens of thousands of people at the Bottown Carnival in Cardiff during its peak. “When we were playing, we didn’t have to know where the carnival was,” Bingham says. “I just followed the bass line.”

When Countryman started in 1981, “there was a rivalry,” Jemmett says. “We faced them all and nothing stopped us.” Everyone claims they have the best system — the Raiders say the same thing — but Jemmett says competitors have done their best to stop their groove. “Our speaker lock got broken into,” he recalls. “Another time, someone cut the wires while we were playing to cut out the sound because the energy we were putting out was unbelievable.”

In their quest to celebrate wherever they can, they end up in some unusual situations. Jemmett recalls being cornered by police one night after he accidentally connected to the electricity from the mayor’s house, while on another occasion they found themselves double-booked for a girl’s 18th birthday party. “But they loved us,” Jemmett says. “Their DJ blasted the speakers trying to match us. It was great, until about 11pm when 80 bikers came in and then it all started.”

Although a scene with a rich history – with the crew playing alongside Lions, Dennis Brown, Jimmy Cliff and countless others – preventing this scene from being forgotten will require the work of historians. Ashish Joshi has spent years tracking audio and video footage of the vocal clashes. “I’m a Londoner, and I grew up collecting tapes and going to dances and carnivals,” he says. “But there’s a lot of snobbery, with people thinking there are no sounds outside of London that can sample us. But there were great presenters and sound systems everywhere that didn’t always get attention. So, when I hear that Cardiff has a sound system scene, I say, ‘Where are the tapes?’ I feel like Indiana Jones.”

Joshi has created an extensive YouTube channel and SoundCloud page to showcase his digital finds, but as people get older and technology becomes obsolete, some recordings disappear faster than he can access them. “It’s a race against time,” he says. “I try to salvage things because they get thrown away.”

Yasmin Begum, a young researcher and activist from Cardiff, has worn the abaya locally. “She wants to do something that combines joy and happiness,” she says. She has a dedicated Instagram page that showcases this kind of shots. “I grew up with this culture, but I don’t see it reflected in galleries, libraries, archives or museums,” she says.

Begum’s father is a ragga and jungle DJ, and her great-grandmother ran a jazz bar in what was then the Tiger Bay area of ​​the city – home to the oldest multi-ethnic community in Wales – so her connection runs deep. “I grew up hearing these glorious stories about the Gulf,” she says. “It was in stark contrast to my post-9/11 experience as a Pakistani Muslim child. The stories were a wonderful world to retreat into. But everyone older than me had either died or gone to prison – I realized it was my responsibility to promote and celebrate culture.”

This upgrade is well deserved, because the sound systems have brought a sense of purpose to those who felt left out. “We were nobody, we weren’t even looked at,” Tylo says. “We didn’t have a future, so we tried to make one for ourselves. The sound systems were a statement to say: ‘You’ve avoided us your whole life, but look, we’ve made it happen in our own communities.’

Parties were held at places like the black-owned Casablanca Club, because “we couldn’t go to the white clubs in the city,” says Eric “Biffy” Howard, who was part of Conqueror. “You were limited. The police would really try to clamp down on what you were doing.” It may have been a shelter, Tyler laughs, and Casablanca was also “a really dirty place. A completely run-down building. It had lights and electricity and a bar. You were lucky to get a chair. You had to stand up and dance because that’s all you could do. But it was a good feeling.”

Word spread about Cardiff and various sound systems from all over the UK were visiting for clashes. The black culture television show Ebony featured them on the scene, and by 1984, up-and-coming local reggae band Bismillah performed on the show. One of the group’s vocalists, Benjy Webb, went on to become the frontman of reggae metal band Skindred, who now play the likes of Wembley Arena and whose latest album, Smile, reached No. 2 in the charts. The Conquerer system “was where I trained,” Webb says. “If it wasn’t for Cardiff Soundsystem, I wouldn’t be where I am now in a successful band. That was special to me.”

However, the Bismillah Project has faded, burdened by a lack of local industry and infrastructure, and Cardiff may remain hostile. The day after the reggae record store opened, “the fruit and veg guy from next door came to our window with a hammer,” Julian says. “He clicked on it and told us to turn off the monkey music.” Years later, when Julian set up a radio station in the city to promote more black and brown music, he said he was targeted by the racist hate group Combat 18: “They sent me an envelope with dog feces and razor blades.”

By the early 1990s, with the rise of dance music and the spread of jungle, the mood and demographics had changed. Al-Fateh ended, the Boat Town Carnival stopped for 16 years, and the Casablanca Club closed. “Since the club closed, everyone has dispersed and some have moved away from each other,” Bingham says. “What was a real scheduled guy is now crazy. Because when the club closed, there was no way for us to communicate. So now, you don’t meet a guy, you don’t see a guy from week to week, you see them from month to month if you see them at all. And then when you see them, they’re in a different state.”

Countryman is still going strong, as is the revitalized Buttown Carnival, and Julian is still an active DJ locally. But there is an overwhelming feeling that more can be done to celebrate and preserve this vital thread of black and Welsh culture. “I can’t wait for Welsh institutions to see value in reggae culture, and for Black Cultural Archives to put together a Black in Wales collection,” Begum says. Bingham points out the stark differences in how this type of culture is financed and housed compared to others. “Look at the hundreds of millions spent on opera houses,” he says. “All this money to get the acoustics right. They’re building these big, fancy buildings for rich people, so why can’t they build special buildings for sound systems to keep the culture going? Because when there’s two clashes going on and you’re blaring… man, nothing’s better.”