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What a great interview, or ‘innerview,’ with Jah Wobble (aka John Wardle), a veteran music making avatar of the bass. His observations and perceptions make for some enjoyably insightful reading, especially for those with any passing familiarity with his work, and what a truly original path he’s traversed with it, one infused with deep, notably unreligious spiritualism.
Jah Wobble’s work has been a regular feature among the radio and media work of Big Beef over the decades.
Some excerpts from this piece, one well worth the read….
Music goes beyond all theories. It’s such a formless thing. It challenges and offers commentaries on the world. The Anglo-Saxon world is a disturbed hornets’ nest on both sides of the Atlantic. This process has been well underway since free market economics began. I’m a left-of-center guy. Music has its place. Some songs are anthemic and mean something. They’ll resonate with people at a certain time. You’ve got to be careful with not getting too carried away with emotion. The real thing for me is music that comes from a more philosophical and spiritual basis. What’s going on with Brexit and the right wing is fucking bullshit. But when you react in a Pavlovian sense against it, that’s also fucking bullshit……
The single “A Very British Coup” I did with Mark Stewart and Keith Levene is an anti-Brexit anthem. It’s talking about Harold Wilson’s British government in the ‘70s. We weren’t far from a military coup in this country during that period. Those right-wing reactionary forces are always there…….
So, going back to the value of music. There are songs I’ve liked that are political, but you have to be careful not to rise to the level of the corny counterculture. In the ‘70s, we always saw through the bullshit. I think that’s one of the defining characteristics of my generation, compared to people 5-10 years older than me……
Through the ‘90s, [Dub] became synonymous with a kind of lazy, dopey kind of thinking. It started in the ‘80s with a crusty mob—squatters and dogs on a bit of string in North London. Dub was there a lot. It became the lowest common denominator at that point. It became very generic, lazy and lacked the kind of revolutionary insight it once had, when I first heard it. I got tired of that scene.
Dub in its true sense was very fundamental. It was a real revelation. When I first heard dub, it made me feel very free. It made my mind feel spacious. For a guy who’s naturally very anxious, that was fantastic. When I first heard King Tubby that absolutely rocked my world.
No other form of music has rocked my world the way dub did. It has emptiness and reflects the interdependence of everything. Dub isn’t a fixed state. It’s not about any kind of concrete reality. It shows that everything’s in a state of flux, including people. I embraced that philosophy and reality. It resonated with me. It has all these dharmas and theories, as well as being an expression of emptiness. It’s about the relationship between the temporary and what’s constantly moving…….
I’m very at home with general Eastern philosophies. I’m very inclusive. It doesn’t matter what fucking color you are or anything. Life is about sensing what people are about. So, fuck borders. We’re all just people. Everyone’s included. Everybody’s welcome to the party. There’s just one starting point for music: human beings.
Of course, there are musical categories. There are labels. But those are just temporary measures. At the heart of music should be some warmth and love. There should be a bit of a spark with some humor, too. When I work with people, I want to find out what they’re about. I want to have fun. We’re a community. We’re pack animals, really…….
A similar thing happened with The Inspiration of William Blake album I did years ago. I knew I was going to do a very Blake thing, but wasn’t sure the music would emerge for it. But it did. Suddenly, we recorded music and it was like “This is it. This is the music for the Blake album.”
The album talks about the interconnectedness of things. It’s also about social change and protest music, especially on something like “The Iron Lady Got Rust.” I’m really critical of Thatcher and free market economics in it. I wanted to talk about money, business and the corporate world on it. So, the album features a heavy kind of poetry……..
I also felt that events could come and overtake us all. I’ve been feeling like that for the past few years. I think it’s what happens at the end of all civilizations. They last 250-300 years. What was a compound comes apart in the end and I think we’re probably looking at that now. I thought “If something happened, we’d have a big regret. So, let’s do some great music while we’re all together.”
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