Lowkey - Long Live Palestine feat. Frankie Boyle, Maverick Sabre (Part 3) [Music Video] | GRM Daily
Before I begin proper, I feel the need to explain what Ethnography is. Simply stated, it is the study of people in their own environment through the use of methods such as participant observation and face-to-face interviewing. It's a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. (so says Wiki)
I call myself an ethnographer because I like to observe, talk to, become friends with, analyse, strip people bare and look into their souls. Sounds scary right? Well I don't think the results are and to be honest I can't help myself. It's the investigative journalist in me.
I've been doing it a long time, but never heard the word or knew what Ethnography was until 2018 when Professor Yasmin Gunaratnam and Dr. Hannah Jones tweeted this:
..after I had written an article for the Telegraph, about working on a construction site in 2018, which started thus:
My background is very different to that of the average slinger or sparkie. But our national debate needs to take their suffering more seriously
Last year, at around this time, I was unemployed. Once, I had pursued an adventurous career as a journalist and documentary filmmaker in east Africa. Back in London I'd founded a scrappy, combative media website for emerging black and minority writers, a directory of black and minority experts for other journalists to access and a literary festival. I was going to bed dreaming of endless Twitter fights with columnists and random trolls. And I realised: it was all driving me crazy.
I was doing ethnography before and have been doing it since including with these wry observations in an essay I called ‘Memoir on Masculinity’ back in 2018.
I sent it to my book editor yesterday and said could this along with what I had said in a viral thead with over 370,000 views as of 9am on Sunday 19 Aug 2024 about Lowkey, Greek Cypriot poet, Anthony Anaxagorou and Akala, plus Turkish Cypriot film director Martin Read be the makings of my second book.. She replied with great advice saying:
So I’d strongly suggest not mentioning any other books besides this one, and not ‘saving’ any good stuff for the second book in the hope and assumption it’ll come off. Getting one book over the line is hard enough. Just focus on making this book as good as it can possibly be would be my advice and then if and when you get to having book 2 convos, which will be at the very minimum at least 12 months from now, likely more, you can cross that bridge when you come to it.
It's a tongue in cheek yet a deadly serious start of something:
There are three types of men (that I can remember) that chat me up/chirps me. All with different styles and ethnicities. That matters less than their class.
Ok maybe one more type; the upper middle class white men. They aren't exactly chirpsing more enjoy having the company of a young(ish) lively woman who maybe has something to teach them but has something in common by virtue of my career experiences.
1. The middle class white/black professional, sometimes an intellectual sometimes not. But they want me to suspend disbelief while they try impress me with their thesis on life, politics, race. These guys will approach me in a number of ways but usually online by either FB/Twitter.
Usually they will come all puffed up with big words, tell me I am “special” in some way. Ready to throw down whatever gauntlet they have up their sleeve. They have usually either read something I wrote, watched one of my films, know that I used to be a breaking news reporter or know I founded Media Diversified.
These guys are exhausting. They usually have little in the way of achievements outside of their profession. Sometimes they have done some activism but usually they keep their devastating truths to twitter and FB. I call them the Facebook jihadists.
The 'Facebook jihadists' are never Muslim. Muslims probably have better things to do than talk about an imagined pure ideology they want to impart on the world, like men from the white left. Muslims talk on Facebook about actual lived experiences of oppression and discrimination. Did you know that even 'equal opportunities' employers give identical CVs with 'white' names more replies than ones with 'black' names.
I had already taken it out of ‘Between a Rock, a Hard Place and a Dystopia’. As I think it stands alone. But if I am to work on a second book it will be in a year or two. Which will give me time to gain more perspective on the subjects.
I was reminded of this because of something that happend online on Saturday. I dont know what the beginning of the row was, I don't really care much but I did wade in with what some call a defence others call an attack, but is in my opinion a reality check intervention for the White Left.
I had seen some grumbling about Lowkey and felt I should to say my piece having known him since 2011, but not having been in touch since 2018 (for personal reasons, that have little to nothing to do with him) and not really followed his work for a while.
When the White Left were listening to Aaron Bastani on chat shit FM in 2011, this is what Lowkey was doing:
..and he paid a hefty price for it too, as the State tried to imprison him for his music, long before Grime became a thing.
Lowkey is not new to this. He's true to this. The white left and the mainstream left and right wing press drummed former head of NUS students, Malia Bouattia out of public life, see Muslim women in leadership are targets for gendered Islamophobia .
📸 Malia Bouttia and me circa 2013
And I decided they won't be drumming out Lowkey. Not on my watch.
A man who has gone to Calais to help the efforts for refugees and gone to Elbit Systemsto support Palestine Action’s efforts in stopping arms supplies to Israel before and during this genocide.
That's more than I have ever done. It’s more than most people who spend their time attacking people on twitter have done.
Nonetheless you can not separate Lowkey Kareem from Akala and Anthony. They are all working class autodidacts. Autodidacticism or self-education/self-learning is the practice of education without the guidance of schoolmasters (i.e. teachers, professors, institutions).
If you want to criticise Lowkey then criticise Anthony Anaxagorou and Akala aswell. The only criticism can be, is them being autodidacts. They are self taught because they had to self teach. Clever working class men of any colour are routinely hounded out of school at a young age.
Usually it's because they're clever, but that can express itself by being unruly, or being bored. Nonetheless, same outcome. White teachers assume they're stupid. So then comes low paid uninteresting jobs or modelling if they're good looking enough, prison or music or poetry.
But the latter two only happen if there's an intervention and some support from someone who cares. For Anthony it was Joelle Taylor. She has mentored him since he was around sixteen. From working as a security guard to being a finalist in the T.S Elliot Prize is not too shabby.
📖 Anthony Anaxagorou's Pathology of Like
I don't know who it was for Akala, as we aren't friends, (but have supported each others work)
but I am SURE there were mentors along the way. I have five. Ava Vidal and I featured Akala on our erstwhile podcast "No Dickheads Allowed"! in 2018. (Theme music is Little Simz’ ‘No Offence’)
🎥 Akala reading Professor Green for filth
And for Lowkey it was filmmaker, Pablo Navarette (there maybe be others) but I was only around when Pablo and independent politician Jody Mcintyre were supporting him.
I DJ’d at Pablo’s fundraising event for Hip Hop Revolucion (2012) which Lowkey featured in and I associate produced.
Now the thing with autodidacts (though people on twitter are now telling me this sounds like ASD)
..is that they teach themselves but they don't necessarily know what they should teach themselves. So some things aren't covered, unless there's an intervention.
Autodidacts know A LOT about certain things that interest them. They may not know much outside of that. So could for example tell you everything about Ancient Mesopotamia if that is of interest to them.
I first knew these three guys, plus Pablo and Jody at the beginning of the nascent anti-imperialist movmemt in 2010, that was spearheaded by Sukant Chandan and Carlos Martinez. You can listen to my interview with Sukant on from last weeks newsletter here The Activist: Forged in the Fires of Jungalism
📸 2018: Anthony Anaxagorou and Samantha Asumadu, Lower Marsh
All of us knew each other, some were friendlier with each other than others. I was friendly with everyone (bar Akala).
There were lots of teach ins at that time. Lots of education. But that education was from other working class autodidacts, again with narrow interests. So when everything is seen through the prism of Israel blame that era..
I can say this because when I met all three of them I had just come back from working as a foreign correspondent in East Africa and DRC, and I was a bit of an observer and saw some amazing people but also some ignorance.
BUT all these people have the best intentions.
You wouldn't criticise Akala because he speaks quick, he's obviously smart, has written books AND he goes on telly or used to go. Same with Anthony. Lowkey god bless him has remained mostly grassroots, in part because his uncompromising stance on Palestine and Justice has made him anathema to the mainstream press.
So perhaps give some grace and realise if a working class, White, Black or Brown man or woman doesn't know something and you think they should, it's most probably because they were self taught.
I am looking forward to Lowkey's next album. Hand On Your Gun is a banger. And Sound to the Struggle was exactly that.
It's possible that I will accept a job offer that will start in September. I'll know more about remuneration and everything else by the end of next week. The job will open me up to attacks from both the Right wing and Left wing Press (if there is a left wing press anymore) it will also put me on par with the likes of Fraser Nelson, Alan Rusbridger, Geordie Greig, Alan White etc. 👋🏾 Lots of unaccountable and powerful White men.
So I am getting ahead of it by posting my co-authored 2012 article 'What Israel’s anti-African pogroms tell us about Zionism'. At the time I and my co-authors Robert Kazandjian and Ali Hocine-Dimerdji were called ‘rats’ for writing it. But that is far less serious than what Lowkey has been called this week and indeed for the best part of two deacdes as he has fought for justice and liberation of Palestian people.
Long Live Palestine. Long Live Gaza.
The police continue to hold Palestine Action activists under counter-terrorism laws after they entered Elbit System’s Bristol factory. My first person account of the demo outside Hammersmith police station last week featured in The Canary UK's editorial is here.
At this point just about every editor in chief of the mainstream press plus independent media and many many Guardian, Telegraph and the Independent journalists plus academics , lawyers, filmmakers and others (Hi Ministry of Justice Press office ) read this newsletter.
I would suggest getting to these three men, before they decide to do it themselves and make a documentary about that period. They have all gone on to build platforms for themselves and others. If you need more material, wait until my book, Between a Rock, a Hard Place and a Dystopia comes out (If I get an agent and a book deal).
Having invited Caitlin Moran and Giles Coren round to my place for dinner (we've out a pin in it until December)
I thought of what my ideal dinner companions would be and came up with J Dilla, Orson Wells, Ava Gardener, Toni Morrison, Refaat Alareer and James Baldwin. Plus Charles Bukowski just to see how he would get on with Orson Wells 👀
The last two weeks have been surreal.
Thank you to Symeon Brown for putting this statement together and for always taking my calls. Plus thank you to all the people who have helped rather than harmed me during this time. I appreciate you.
Part II of What a Hell Of A Way To Die Guest Episode: Spycops Legacy, Part 2 (feat. Tom Fowler) will be out later today. Listen to Part 1 here
P.S I know there is going to be some non-black women and /or middle class women who try to take my experiences and use them as their own. Trust me, I will hunt you down if you do and you will catch these hands
An Ethnography of Black, White and Brown Working Class Men