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We talk 25 years of Fabio & Grooverider with Cleveland Watkiss
Drum and Bass | Tuesday 28th July 2015 | Osh
Next up in our series celebrating 25 years of Fabio & Grooverider, vocalist and composer Cleveland Watkiss talks about the effect the duo have had on the scene and on him.
What’s your first memory of Fabio and Grooverider?
Well my first memory of Fabio is probably at Speed. When they launched the club I remember the lady that was hosting the night, Caroline if I remember right, I knew her from The Wag on Wardour Street, I think, The Wag was running from the 50s, 60s, it’s an old club, my dad used to go there I believe, back in the day. She was doing a night there, so I known her for a while and I bumped into her and she said she was hosting this new night and I should come down and meet Goldie. I didn’t know who Goldie was, he’s looking for a singer, he’s doing an album, she’s running, running, running and I said “yeah I’ll come down”. So I went down there, Speed, I think it was a Thursday night, LTJ Bukem and Fabio were the main DJs playing, so that’s when I first heard Fabio. My kids they were listening to jungle, kool.fm, so that’s how I got to hear the music. I’d hear it and be like “what’s that? What’s that?” and being a musician, a jazz musician, I got interested in the beats, the way that they’d programme the beats was really interesting to me, they way they’d make them keep moving, this perpetual thing going with the beats, so I got fascinated with that. And the bass obviously, the bass that’s my foundation because I come from soundsystem back in the 70s, I grew up with Fatman Sound and Valve Sound, just the real original organic sound. The first time I heard jungle it was live, a place down in Tottenham, I went there one night and was like “this is soundsystem reinvented”, that’s what it was to me, this is like soundsystem’s come round again in a new way, that’s how I heard it.
And what do you think Fabio and Grooverider bring to drum and bass?
Well to me they bring the 365, 24/7. Between them they’ve played the whole thing. Rider plays a certain way and Fabio plays a certain way so with them as a combination you get the whole thing really. You get an organic thing as well, raw. It’s not necessarily all technical, it’s very emotional and very deep the way that they mix and the way that they select. The way that they put tunes together is an art form.
It must be interesting for you because you did have a jazz background right, and when I was raving at Speed, to me it was some type of future jazz.
Yeah because Speed was championing a different kind of energy with the music there. When the club Speed kicked in they were introducing a different kind of thing. I guess you get these names come, you get drum and bass, jungle, to me it’s all black music, it’s all coming from the black experience but obviously there’s a fusion here, you got the culture from here but originally it’s coming from Africa, to me anyway.
So take what Fabio was doing back then and Bukem, your style obviously went quite well with that, did that influence you and your career?
Well yeah because Project 23, I put a live band together at that time called Project 23, which was a live drummer Marque Gilmore and DJ LaRouge from Tottenham, a former house DJ and we were creating our own thing. We were trying to do something different, we weren’t trying to necessarily make tunes that were 160 or 170 or whatever the tempos were. We were influenced by breakbeats and influenced by drum and bass and influenced by jazz and influenced by reggae and dub. We were just trying to create something different and we did, Project 23 was something different for us, it was a live thing, we had saxophone, trumpets, dancers, a live drummer.
It was very much of that time as well.
Yeah it was all influenced by all the things we were going to check. For me personally kool.fm was the big, big, big influence because I used to go to school with Eastman, in fact I used to have a sound with Eastman, a lot of people don’t know that, way back in the day.
And people think you’ve just come in the game!
I didn’t just arrive here, like I said I came up in the 70s in the soundsystem and roots reggae, that was my influence, Johnny Clarke, Peter Tosh, them kind of singers, that was my influence as a kid, 13, 14, that’s what I was into. But at the same time I got into jazz as well, my father loved jazz, he wasn’t a musician but I used to hear it in the house. I’d go to jazz clubs, learn about the music because to me it’s all part of our journey as black people. The diaspora, the music is massive, it’s rich, so sometime the labels don’t necessarily do the music justice I don’t feel. We give the music all these names, jungle, drum and bass, jazz, soul, nu soul, all these names but at the end of the day there’s a root that it’s all coming from. When you dig into the source of all, where did the breakbeats come from? Who are their influences? Taking it back to the 20s, to the 30s when we first came into the west as black people, you can trace it right back. For me it’s important. I love history, I love learning about the history of music and where it all comes from. I just feel that the further you go back, the more you can go forward because you’re tapping into more colours, you can bring more colours to the table. If you understand where it’s coming from, when you start to do your thing you can bring all thatstuff , you’re bringing Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Nyabinghi drumming, it’s all in the music, it’s all there. Jungle, look at the name, where do you think that’s come from? Where’s the jungle? It ain’t in Hackney, the jungle’s in Africa.
How do you think Fabio and Grooverider remained iconic for 25 years?
Well I think that they embraced the development of breakbeat music. They come from the acid house movement in the mid, late 80s, again what’s that sound? That’s a deep sound coming from where? The Chicago sound. I understand they’re coming out of that, that’s why they’re so strong now, their roots are deep inside soundsystem, they understand the whole evolution of where the music comes from. A lot of people today don’t necessarily know where the roots of the music come from. A lot of people coming up today are just pressing buttons, the disc is just spinning, they don’t understand about vinyl, some of them ain’t even seen vinyl before, they only know digital. So there’s a history, a journey that you can look at and trace and enrich yourself with, you can’t shirk the history. To answer your question I think that’s where Fabio and Grooverider are really important because they have history, they’re coming from the root and they bring that. When you’re hearing them mix, you’re hearing that depth. They’re very eclectic as well, they listen to all different kinds of shit as well, it’s all in there.
Do you have a message for them?
Yeah man, another 25 years. They’ll keep it rolling, another 25 years. Right here, I’ll see you in 25 years.
Follow Cleveland on Twitter.
