Skinny Sunday: Hastings Local Youth Talent is on Fire
ROD WEBB is entranced by young bands of Hastings
Chimer at the Stade
I first became aware of the Skinny Sunday music festival while watching the Fat Tuesday Second Line Youth Band at the Sanctuary Festival in June. I bumped into Sally Lampitt, one of the directors of Fat Tuesday, and she explained that they would be taking part in the one-day August festival being organised by the HFT (Hastings Fat Tuesday) Youth Curatorial Panel. Before this I was vaguely aware of the work HFT were doing with young musicians in the town but was not at all clear about what exactly this was or where it was going. So I was intrigued.
It was a revelatory experience. The usual crowd that turns up for live music at the Stade was there, a mixture of people between 30 and 85 with some children thrown in. But this time there was also a sizable gathering of Hastings youth, there to watch their mates or just enjoy music they could relate to.
Arriving to interlude music, I was soon blown away by the first performance by Borough Council and the two bands that followed, Chimer and Monakis (from Brighton). A lot goes into a memorable musical experience, and it was interesting to examine why this was such an enjoyable one.
THE HASTINGS SOUND
Part of it was the almost arrogant nonchalance in the way the bands appeared, immediately owning the stage. You had a real sense that they knew what they were doing before opening up. And when they did, you were hit by their sheer energy. But not just raw energy. This was energy honed through practice, but that had still not lost its edge. And the first two bands were quite different from anything I’d heard before.
I talked to a group of young girls (and one guy). One of them explained how a ‘Hastings sound’ was beginning to evolve. They were there because they knew the bands and some of the band members, but one of them pointed out how more people were coming from ‘outside’ and discovering this ‘new sound’.
Since arriving in Hastings, I’ve got used to the huge pool of talented older musicians. But apart from scattered encounters with younger ones, I hadn’t really come across the burgeoning youth music scene. Jay Toole, someone who knows that scene – and beyond – greeted me with “The local talent is on fire at the moment!” He pointed out how bands had come and gone in the past but that now they knew they weren’t confined to Hastings, and that there was an international playground out there.
On searching out more young people, one man gave me two more pointers for what was happening. On a national scale, he suggested there had been a resurgence of Indie bands, and on a local level, he highlighted the big influence of Bexhill sixth form college, which has an excellent range of music courses in their Department of Performing Arts. It’s important to get them early! As one of those I spoke to remarked: “I’ve known the drummer in Borough Council since he was sixteen.”
But there has been a great deal of work done by HFT ‘behind the scenes’ over the year, mentoring young musicians. A festival curated by the youth of the town is, to some extent, a culmination of that work. As Sally Lampitt modestly commented, “We just gave them the support they needed and let them get on with it.”
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