Hidden Beach? You could hear it for miles!
VICTORIA KINGHAM soaks up sun and sound on a Saturday afternoon
I stand in the middle of a DJ competition – Nick Hosier grooves to his decks, and Hastings Dub Club is just LOUD! I take in the sun and the sounds and the sweet smell of skunk, and stand in the middle of the auditory mingling, before beginning to circulate.
There always seems to be a genuine feeling of good humour about gatherings in this particular town. Everything is a family occasion: grandmas groove along with toddlers, teens, twenties and thirties. On the main stage is a drum band. I don’t know if it’s the one that always seems to play in the High Street on festival days – in fact I doubt if there are two like this. Great mixture of players of all ages thoroughly enjoying themselves, led brilliantly by the indefatigable Julian Humphries and bizarrely named YYPPFD. They are essentially a carnival band, but for today’s performance they are augmented. There are at least twelve people on stage playing various types of hand drum, congas, timbales, all stepping and swaying to the rhythm. It’s impressive, infectious, insistent. The gifted tenor saxophone player Josephine Davies appears quietly on the right and riffs splendidly along with the drums, and I am delighted. Davies has won numerous awards and already has substantial experience on the London jazz circuit, extending the genre with her own unique compositional blend (catch her album Satori: How Can We Wake). Having moved to Hastings just two years ago, she adores it and loves playing with the drum band. She also appeared with Las Cabras Cubanas earlier, and despite her disarmingly modest demeanour she is making innovative musical waves.
I move round to the stalls. There is a stall selling T-Shirts with logos: Blood Beat Records, Hear The Music, Feel The Vibes, pictures of Bob Marley and Haile Selassie. It’s a new generation but it reminds me of the late 1970s. Rastafarian people sell herbs, spices, bright heavy jewellery. I struggle to think what organic ashwagandha powder might be. Various food stalls operate – Serial Grillers sell wraps with fun names – The Popeye, The Italian Job. Mama Putts sells stew beans, dumplings, jerk chicken. Khalid’s Kitchen (normally at the corner of Priory Meadow) are also here. Another stall sells food from the Philippines – Bistek Tagalog (Filipino Beef Stew) and piles of transparent noodles.
Most people dance unashamedly in the afternoon sunlight, though some sit on an inspired seating arrangement of straw bales set well back but around the main stage. Grandmothers dance with toddlers, men dance in feathered headdresses. Children and adults, unembarrassed, have their faces intricately painted, blow bubbles. People meet and greet, kiss on both cheeks. The drumming gets louder, the DJ speakers compete. A lone, thin, multi-tattooed girl wanders along holding a pint of beer in a plastic tumbler from one of the several bars selling alcohol. She is the first person I have seen looking unhappy. I hope she finds whatever, or whomever, she is searching for.
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