Claude ‘Hopper’ Hendrickson, now a Project Manager working on Racial Justice campaigns such as the ‘Race Card Project’ at Leeds West Indian Centre, has been involved in Leeds’ Sound Systems since the age of fourteen. He speaks to Ellie Montgomery about his experiences of identity, community and music within the city of Leeds and beyond.

It’s undeniable that, since the 1980s, the reception and appreciation of Sound Systems in the UK has been greatly transformed. In Leeds alone, events like Sub Dub and Brotherhood are now immensely popular, selling out every time. Hendrickson remarks upon this changing landscape, noting that “thirty to thirty-five years ago, compared to the way Sub Dub is now, the young black children of those days were criminalised for playing loud music and gathering young people together. We as the black young people of that generation really suffered negatively from bad press and extra policing – nobody wanted us to use community centres. Sometimes, I’m amazed at how far the Sound System has come in thirty years.”

Hendrickson acknowledges that, at the early stages of Sound Systems, he and his friends took inspiration from their life at home: “not with the flashing lights and all of that but [we were] leaning towards what people in our community were doing, what our parents used to have. They used to have weekend parties where a guy would come in and DJ. So we were taking our lead from those kinds of people.” The music took inspiration and precedent from “the men who came from the Caribbean with bags of records”, he adds. “Being in that first generation of young black kids growing up in the UK, because my mother came in here in 1958 and I was born in 1960, I suppose music became the first thing of giving me a sense of identity.”

This first generation of young black people and their drive towards creating and showcasing their own music is wryly noted by Hendrickson as a result of “going to places like The Mecca on a Monday night for the disco and realising that ninety percent of the music [we] didn’t like anymore. It was just a small percentage of DJs playing that [we] liked, so we went about developing our own ‘discotheques’ which are now known as Sound Systems.”

It is vital to note, however, that there was also a far bleaker element behind the need to create music which deviated from mainstream culture: “if I’m openly honest, the [already established] discotheques were not a safe place for us because we were outnumbered. We’d go to discos to have a good time, but we ended up being in fights. White boys would want to attack us and going out to clubs in town became dangerous. We could go and have a great time, but when we were coming home… We needed to do something for ourselves, we couldn’t keep doing this, going to town and fighting. Sound Systems, initially, was a way of getting us out of that zone where we were being racially attacked; to let us have stuff in our own communities where we didn’t have to worry about that anymore; to give ourselves our own space to play the music we wanted to play for one hundred percent of the night.”

These spaces of new musical creativity soon advanced until there were more than twenty-five various Sound Systems in Leeds. In turn, the popularity of the genres and music being played also grew. Hendrickson considers that this recognition of black artists has had an intrinsic impact on the cultural discourses in Leeds: “music has grown like society has grown, like multiculturalism has grown. I think, if you take a step back, Britain is a bedrock of massive cultures. Reggae has helped the black community establish itself in the big cities and some of the small cities like Bradford and Huddersfield.”

As Hendrickson acknowledges Sound Systems’ contribution to both cultural identity and the identity of cities across the UK, he also reflects on the multiplicity of black music: “it’s not just Reggae, it’s not just Soca, it’s not just Gospel, it’s not just RnB or the new dance wave. There’s so many facets of it. Music is universal. Bob Marley said music isn’t owned by any group or any race or any individual – music is owned by the people.”

This brings us onto Hendrickson’s next musical venture after Sound Systems: the desire to return music to ‘the people’.

In the late 1980s, an individual from London approached Hendrickson and others about the possibility of starting a ‘pirate’ radio station in Leeds. With some previous experience doing occasional slots on Leeds’ Radio Aire, Hendrickson was keen to become involved in creating a more permanent platform for alternative music: “with Sound Systems, you could only really get to the people who had come to your event. Radio gave us the next step because it could get to the people who didn’t come to the dance as they could listen to you from home. On mainstream radio, we were not hearing the tunes that we now knew were out there.”

At this point, Hendrickson wants to make it clear that he wishes to “move away from the word ‘pirate’, as ‘pirate station’ gives a negative connotation. We see them as community stations: serving a community that is not being served.” On the contrary, “we don’t see it in the community as ‘pirate’ – we see it as delivering a service to people who are not serviced by mainstream radio. But they called it ‘pirate’ radio and the war went on. They shut radios down, they’d be set up again, they’d shut them down, they’d be set back up. 2018, 32 years later, there’s still a couple of community radios.”

Hendrickson touches further on this community resilience: “I know guys that have been battling the system for the last 25 to 30 years. They’re still being bashed, they’re still being raided, they’re still having their equipment taken. On what basis? On the basis that they are illegally transmitted. They’ve been doing it for a quarter of a century. It’s kind of heart-breaking actually to watch those guys involved in radio because they can’t go out and get advertising because they’re not a legal station, or they’re not deemed as legal. So they’re running it out of their pockets to try and give the community a service.”

With stations like BBC Radio 1Xtra, it can be noted that licensed Radio in 2018 is often attempting to assimilate the tone and content of community radio. Hendrickson, however, observes that “when it’s on mainstream, it has a mainstream feel; a mainstream structure and a mainstream message. Whereas people want localised structure, a localised message.” Chapeltown’s community radio “allowed a window into us. It allowed people to listen to some of the music that we’d been playing. And the evidence of it having a positive impact is all over the place.”

Ironically, the tension between the local authorities and community radio is often inconsistent as, according to Hendrickson, “there have been certain things in the past where the police have gone around the back door and said: ‘can you announce this?’” It seems that a level of hypocrisy is at play in terms of official, national governmental procedure and the actual practice within local community.

After a thoughtful and reflective interview, Hendrickson’s final words of frustration are bittersweet. “I’m so disappointed that, even after 30 goddamn years, we’re still classed as ‘pirates’. They’ve not appreciated the value that we add culturally because a lot of the music we play, a lot of black music, is conscious. Why do people like Bob Marley’s music? It’s not because he’s black, it’s because of the message his music holds. For the Windrush generation, music has been a linchpin of our survival. We wouldn’t have survived as black people in this country had we not had music – I totally believe that.”

Ellie Montgomery