Soul<\/a> Club or south London\u2019s Rivoli Ballroom, all the biggest actors in this so-called northern revival are from south of Birmingham \u2013 as was the case with the organisers of the night in Manchester that Tom attended. So, it begs the question, one that Tom couldn\u2019t shake on that dancefloor: When did northern soul get so southern?<\/p>\ndouble quotation markThere isn\u2019t just one northern soul scene, there\u2019s lots of different scenes now, all doing slightly different things<\/p>\n
Northern soul began as an underground music and dance movement in the early 1970s as a form of escapism for young people living in small industrial towns across the north. Dressed in baggy trousers, vests and bowling shirts, enthusiasts had a spiritual devotion to dancing to fast-tempo American soul music well into the wee hours \u2013 often assisted with the drug of choice, speed. DJs flew to the US to find rare records from obscure artists, and brought them back to soundtrack small dancehalls and working men\u2019s clubs full of dance-hungry youngsters. Word soon spread, and people travelled from across the country to experience the high-intensity evenings in the scene\u2019s biggest venues such as the Wigan Casino and Blackpool Mecca.<\/p>\n
YouGov polling found that people in the north-west and north-east have some of the strongest attachments to their region, with the latter outpacing London for home town pride. Despite this, the collapse of industry across northern towns has defined northern towns with higher deprivation and fewer opportunities than many places in England; 44% of 16\u201321-year-old northerners expect to move from their home town in search of work. With a brain drain pulling young people towards the capital, does northern culture risk being flushed down the plug hole, too?<\/p>\n
Photograph: Greta Kaur\/Deptford Northern Soul Club<\/p>\n
Keith Gildart, an academic from Leigh, Greater Manchester and co-author of Keeping the Faith: A History of Northern Soul, says Dave Godin \u2013 a journalist, music expert and soul record shop owner in the 1970s \u2013 was one of the first to observe the cultural differences that went on to define the northern soul subculture: \u201cHe saw an authentic industrial working-class scene which was very different from the counterculture of the south. That sense of northernness, which is mythologised in a lot of ways, comes from Dave Godin.\u201d<\/p>\n
Photograph: Jeanie Jean<\/p>\n
Lewis Henderson is one half of the south London-based Deptford Northern Soul Club; he\u2019s responsible for the night where Tom discovered the scene. Henderson has an unmistakably London drawl but his father\u2019s record collection and home town of Carlisle lay the groundwork for his affinity for northern soul. \u201cI realised the music my dad was banging on about was actually dead rare.\u201d<\/p>\n
Northern soul down south may sound contradictory, but the history of the scene is not solely the preserve of the upper half of England. The term \u201cnorthern soul\u201d was itself a Deptford creation, coined by Godin after he recognised an influx of northern customers looking for increasingly rare American soul records in his own store.<\/p>\n
When asked about the implications of northern identity in his club events, Henderson speaks with much forethought. \u201cYou have to understand Deptford has a huge black community,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd this music is black American music from the working cities like Detroit. Even though it means a lot to the people of northern England, it belongs to the people of America.\u201d<\/p>\n
The northern soul sound found in songs such as Frank Wilson\u2019s Do I Love You (Indeed I Do) and Out on the Floor by Dobie Gray was championed by mod venues like the Flamingo Club in 1960s London, Gildart argues. \u201cA lot of that soul music was central to the mod scene in the south,\u201d he says. \u201cThe other important individual is Roger Eagle, who was from Oxford, and was one of the DJs at the Twisted Wheel in Manchester.\u201d<\/p>\n
While they may not be synonymous with the scene, London and the south always played a part in the history of northern soul. \u201cYou always had people from the south who travelled up to the north,\u201d says Gildart. \u201cThey might not have had their own scenes, or the scenes were much smaller, but they were moving across the country seeking out the best soul nights.\u201d<\/p>\n
What actually may distinguish the modern era of southern soul from its northern equivalent is an age divide. Deptford\u2019s nights \u2013 held everywhere from Portsmouth to Nottingham \u2013 are unashamedly targeted at younger dancers, as are those of Burnin Up Soul Club, founded by Aaron Alexander Reed. The 21-year-old is originally from Bristol, and it was the city\u2019s eponymous club that inspired him to set up his own northern soul events in his new home of Manchester (and, of course, London). Reed says his Manchester nights are targeted at students in younger hubs such as Fallowfield, and attenders are a \u201cmix\u201d of southern students, blow-ins and locals from nearby Salford. He theorises that most northerners may associate northern soul with their parents (his own father grew up in Blackpool) \u2013 and a lack of familial cringe means that curious students from the south more readily flock to his events.<\/p>\n
Out on the floor \u2026 Deptford Northern Soul Club\u2019s Lewis Henderson (left) and Will Foot. Photograph: Chloe Ackers<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, many of the places that helped spawn northern soul like Wigan, Blackpool and Stoke are reliant on the older generations who cut their teeth during the scene\u2019s heyday. As Reed points out: \u201cWhen I go to some classic soul nights \u2013 and I do go to them quite a lot \u2013 it\u2019s all the old people there. The new nights, not so much.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bristol Northern Soul Club is arguably the one most responsible for introducing the younger generation to northern soul: founder Eve Arslett who filmed a viral video of her daughter and fellow club co-creator, Levanna McLean, dancing in 2013 that first truly captured the attention of social media. Arslett isn\u2019t interested in a north-south divide: \u201cYou could say at the moment that northern soul is global \u2026 There isn\u2019t just one northern soul scene anyway, there\u2019s lots of different scenes now, all very much doing slightly different things.\u201d<\/p>\n
She says that her Bristol group has \u201cvery different aims and [does] things very differently\u201d to her soul contemporaries from Deptford. For her, the question around northern soul comes down to authenticity. \u201cThe term purist is nothing about the location or the geography,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s about the music or the record collecting. Growth is a good thing. Things like that will naturally evolve. It\u2019s not really limited to the north of England.\u201d<\/p>\n
Photograph: Jeanie Jean\/Deptford Northern Soul Club<\/p>\n
Kev Roberts, who got his start as a DJ at Wigan Casino when he was just 16, does see a difference between the regions. The 69-year-old is glad to see southern events flourish, but wishes the media would finally give the north its flowers. \u201cThey never have done,\u201d he says, \u201cprobably because Blackpool has got an image of a bit of a kiss-me-quick scene.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey really ought to remember the folks and organisers and the venues that have really kept this going, no disrespect to the south at all,\u201d he adds. \u201cI don\u2019t just mean Blackpool Tower but Sheffield City Hall and King George\u2019s Hall in Blackburn \u2013 these places were regularly pulling 1,000 people, which the south, so far, has not done. Those fans have kept the scene well and truly going to make it easier for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
The question of whether northern soul is being given a leg up by interest down south, or it\u2019s being stripped of its historical and regional context comes at a time when northerners seem to be thinking about identity more and more. Northern societies are \u201cfighting back\u201d at what they see as swarms of southerners in their home towns; while a new, exciting movement of northern gothic music has emerged in Bradford, Preston and Hull.<\/p>\n
Photograph: Jeanie Jean\/Deptford Northern Soul Club<\/p>\n
Northern soul isn\u2019t the only northern-born musical subculture to be adopted by the south in recent years. Donk, a genre spin-off from hard house that developed in Wigan and Bolton during the late 00s, was initially derided in the press, shunned and remained relatively obscure (outside the genre\u2019s de facto anthem, Put a Donk On It by the Blackout Crew). It took 15 years before donk was embraced in London clubs becoming a phenomenon miles away from its original home.<\/p>\n
But unlike donk, the contemporary form of northern soul seems here to stay. Northern soul\u2019s emphasis on dancing and unashamed movement places it in contrast with modern club culture, at a time when young people are going out less and less (in one study, conducted on behalf of the Night Time Industries Association, 61% of young people reported going out less frequently, with just 16% saying they were more likely to go out after 10pm).<\/p>\n
On where a time-stamped movement like northern soul can go, Henderson says he wants to \u201cbring northern soul into the 21st century\u201d. He goes on: \u201cWe want to make a safe space where people can feel free to lose themselves in a group, because that\u2019s really hard right now in individualism. We want that feeling to carry you away and make you dance, because that\u2019s what it is: a clubbing movement; a dance movement.\u201d<\/p>\n
But has the scene lost its northern soul? To people like Henderson, the scene is simply evolving to meet the needs of a new generation of young people who are again seeking a form of escapism. \u201cIn England, there is this north-south divide, but there\u2019s also a class divide. That divide doesn\u2019t matter to us. What matters to us is you go out, you work all week, and you just want to have a nice time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tom found northern soul by mistake. Despite living in Salford, Greater Manchester his entire life, the 24-year-old had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549866,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-549865","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-gb","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}