Northern Soul Got its Spin Back

Image from Northern Soul

On a random brisk Friday night, I found myself taking refuge in the cosy atmosphere of Hackey’s Moth Club, a club for ex-servicemen turned fabled east London live venue; the perfect host venue for luminaries of the genre Will and Lewis, who I met and spoke to before hitting the dance floor.

Kavwanga: I am here with the Deptford Northern Soul Club, Will and Lewis, and I will be asking them questions, picking their brains a bit, and seeing what the mystery is behind the Northern Soul. What drew you, Lewis and Will, to Northern Soul as a genre?

Lewis: We started in South London, and it was much more of a student crowd because it was near Greenwich School of Music, Goldsmiths, Camberwell, and Chelsea. That was about 70% of our demographic, mainly because they were the areas we postered.

Kavwanga: Do you feel any responsibility for the revival coming here with younger generations?

Will: I think it’s grown naturally; there’s been enough interest, and people will come to our nights and want to start their own. I mean, that’s how we started a night because we wanted to go to other nights, and people younger than us came to our night, and they wanted to start their own thing, and it went on. I think this is a natural progression.

Lewis: We don’t want to be a monolith. We want to inspire people to do interesting things, and I think Northern Soul is music we love because we’re fans of it. So, if other people are DJing the same kind of music, that’s good because it embeds the scene in the cities and in time as well as the geographical location of the moment.

Will: We’ve always wanted to put Northern Soul back into the context of modern dance music, i.e., say, people go out three or four times a month. Maybe they would go to a techno night, a disco night, a house night. But then they’d also go to Northern Soul Night.

Lewis: I think that’s important because I feel like even if something is retro, the act of playing about music again in my contemporary space, um, it says something about a present as much as it does about the past, and you’ve got to ask why are people, the audience and the DJs, are so interesting this 1960s, 70s black American music and it’s because a lot of the messages in the songs relate to now it is a poignant message with music.

Will: People like a good sing-song. People want to feel part of something; the easiest way is to sing along. Call and response, whatever you wanna say from back in the day. You know, and you don’t have to know all the dance movies. You don’t have to see the genre’s history, but you can sing along and have a nice time.

Kavwanga: How would you describe a Northern Soul Club night compared explicitly to other club nights, and why would that appeal to different people?

Will: I mean, we can only go on our own experience, but in terms of Northern Soul nights, it’s been a long time since I’ve been to anything that’s not our wheelhouse, but it’s a very relaxed crowd. I think I wouldn’t say it’s it’s too pretentious. I don’t think there’s anyone here to judge anyone.

Will: There’s a big buzzword in club music; everyone talks about community and strives to have a community. I think it’s something you can never take for granted: Tonight, we’ve got people who haven’t been in years. There are people here for the first time. The best thing that could happen is that two people who haven’t been here in a long time will be together, recognise each other, and say hello. Not because they know each other, but because they recognise that they’ve both been in the space before and are comfortable enough to say hello.

Kavwanga: I found your club nights resonated with me in a wholly unique way; I’ve met so many people here, just coming by myself. It was wonderful to experience it.

Will: That’s what you might tell three other people, and they might go, “oh my God, I need to come that sounds like my place,” and we would never take that for granted. It just takes time, and soul music is a good catalyst.

Kavwanga: When you see your demographics, do they respond differently to certain records you put on?

Lewis: It changes over time because we’ve been playing for nine years, and one of the reasons we’ve been able to have this longevity in our DJing is that we DJ together. So, I don’t know what Will will play; we haven’t discussed it before. He might play a song, and I’ll ask, “What the hell was that? I’ve never heard that; what about this?”

Will: And the other way as well, like, I bought three new records, and we’d like, all right, we’ll give him a go and “No, I’ll never play that again”.

Lewis: It, but also, as you know, there is a wealth of northern soul music because a considerable amount of music was produced in the 60s, 70s, and early 80s in America. So maybe I’m more interested now in that kind of proto-disco sound than I used to be in the past and Will is gonna counter that by playing something different.

Will: You should have been there at Bunker Club with seven or eight records to our name.

Deptford Northern Soul Club scaled: Hunger Magazine

Lewis: I borrowed them for my dad, and then he rang me the next day, and he was like, where are my records? Ha ha, No, he DJed as well. He did DJ; he played the opening slot.

Kavwanga: Now, obviously off the back of, you know, playing Glastonbury and doing many other great venues. How was that? Playing at festivals?

Lewis: We’ve done it many times, which is always different. No one is there to see you. It’s just they’ just there.

They’re just staggering through a field, and they hear some music very like him they’re like, I’m pissed. I’m gonna have a good time. And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Will: Festivals are weird; sometimes, you’ve got ten seconds to kill it from moment one. And you’ve got people who may know little about all the soul and want to hear Northern Soul songs. i.e. the hits. You’ve got other people who don’t know a single thing, and then you got other people there who know a lot about Northern Soul and want some deep cuts, so we call it the festival set.

image by @jeaniejeanphotos

Kavwanga: Based on the history and background of Northern Soul as a working class. Do you see the fashion and aesthetics of Northern Soul as divorced or inseparable from Northern Soul as a subculture?

Lewis: I don’t know. I don’t even think the saw is a subculture anymore, personally. It was at the time, but when you think of working-class people now, they’re not wearing flares or wider power shirts. There’s a whole different working class now. And suppose you don’t embrace a different kind of fashion, a fashion of the 21st century. In that case, it will be a retro night, and that’s why we always want to emphasise that we wish modern fashions would permeate this old music.

Kavwanga: My concluding questions are if you have a favourite memory from all the nights you have played or DJed and what’s stuck out.

Lewis: Yeah, one time we were in Manchester, and it was this big storm, and we were DJing in a room with like 350 people, and it was really busy, and then there was a power cut, and it suddenly became quite scary, no one could get a beer, tills went out. The music cut out. There wasn’t even a fire exit sign. They all got their phones out, and I’m holding my light from the camera. And then we just started singing a song, and they didn’t leave. I’d never heard a cheer so big when the music and the lights came back on.

Kav, (writer), image by @jeaniejeanphotos

Kavwanga: Do you get a lot of letters or communication from fans?

Will: Yeah, we got communication from fans saying, I’m excited it’s my first one, I’m coming, or like, people will tell Lewis, and I wanna come on my own. Is that okay? And it’s like, yeah, there’ll be other people there. And then there’ll be other things like, um, we got an email from someone saying that they got married and met at our night, which was cool, you know, that’s, put an age to us, but it’s wild.

Kavwanga: And lastly, obviously, you guys have this legendary residency here another. Unfortunately, the venue, Moth Club itself, is threatened by developers. Do you have any thoughts or words on keeping small venues alive?

Will: No venue wants to disturb its neighbours; they want to be part of the fabric of a community. Venues exist where people live because you want people to come in and socialise. You need to do some sort of survey and be like, well, this is the noise pollution from the venue. Your problem is that the estate agents don’t need to tell renters or buyers about the venue. So, from my understanding, communication doesn’t go down the chain. But all the developers’ aggressive action has done is highlight the issues that made people more afraid of starting things, and London will suffer. There are fewer spaces to do things like this in London and countrywide.