Tales of the Tower Block

Saw the Soweto Kinch Trio yesterday. They were playing numbers from “A Life in the Day of B19 – Tales of the Tower Block”. The first thing that struck me was how much they sounded like Spearhead. They mix hip hop, jazz and funk (though mebbe Spearhead has more funk) (then again, I’m not sure whether what I mean by funk is actually funk), they experiment and they do socially conscious music.

Kinch, the lead singer, grew up in Handsworth (B19 is a postcode), which apparently is to Birmingham what Wanathamulla is to Colombo, or what Hollandspoor is to Den Haag. This flavours the music, though I don’t know Kinch well enough to know whether it’s a gimmick. The songs I heard/remembered were “So” and another where the chorus goes something like “its all about the monee”. “So” is about the pretentiousness of musicians. About the bragging/swanking/general pretentiousness about millions of albums sold and shiny SUVs. It reminded me of arguments I used to have with Joke. I like old, angry hip hop, where lyrics rage about arrests, hunger and lack of opportunity, not about how many diamonds you’ve stuck in your teeth. Joke used to say though that each artist sings about what they know, the old crowd about poverty, because they were poor, and the new crowd about being rich, because they’re rich.

I still think you can talk about emancipation, even if you’re not dying from the lack of it yourself. I liked Kinch because he seems to be a rich kid who’s not spoilt. Will listen to Tales of the Tower Block and write some more soon.