THE UNTOLD STORY OF RAREGROOVE • The Blackheath Grass Piano • Mairéad Sheerin

Background to the video:
I grew up in Blackheath in the sixties and seventies, a leafy middle class suburb of London just far enough from the centre to be called a 'village'. It was a bubble where summers were long and where time passed slowly. Without mobile phones and the internet my main exposure to music was Top Of The Pops and the local newsagent which stocked Top 30 chart singles.

With only 3 channels of British TV available I grew up oblivious to what we now call 'Raregroove'. My only exposure to music was the TOTP countdown each.

LPs were expensive on a teenage budget so the flow of musical discoveries was mainly hit and miss and dependent on friends who may have been lucky enough to have discovered a Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin or David Bowie album.

With such restrictive exposure to music the record companies had us all in the palm of their hands ensuring the 30 chart records of any particular week were well stocked and available across the country. It was in their interest to keep us fed with as little variety as possible so they could sell as many chart singles as possible sustaining their monopoly and keeping impressionable teenagers like myself fed with dumbed down pop music.

As a nation we were collectively huddled around the TV every Thursday night, the highlight of our week being the excitement of finding out if the top ten had changed and most importantly who was in the coveted number one spot.

I didn't have a radio and walkman's had not been invented, so the only music I heard between Top Of The Pops and visits to my friends was the classical music in my Dad's vinyl collection which we were not allowed to touch as he'd invested in very expensive high end audio equipment solely for the purpose of playing his pristine classical records – mainly Wagner, Mahler and Beethoven. During my early teens the rawcus sounds of Slade and T-Rex were far more appealing to a rebellious teenager trying hard to find a musical genre with a 'raw' edge to counter the classical music wafting from my dad's music room.

Classical music was the perfect backdrop for the Blackheath bubble my parents and their generation chose to live in. Places like Hampstead, Dulwich and Blackheath were where the young middle-class moved to in the 70's to start families as these 'villages' in the city provided idyllic urban havens often nestled between poorer urban areas.

For many young 60's professionals, holding down stressful jobs in the city, classical music was a way to soothe the soul at the weekends and after a day commuting in to central London – but as a teenager I was not trying to escape from the stress of a nine to five job but rather connect with the heartbeat of the city that my parents were sheltering me from in Blackheath.

On a Sunday in March 2022 I was walking through the village after a family meal on a glorious spring afternoon. As we approached the Music Halls at the top of the hill the early spring sunshine drew me in to photographing the landmark 'grass piano' that sits outside the building next door – The Blackheath Conservatoire Of Music.

I was filming my flier for The May London Raregroove Party which I'd perched on the music shelf of the grass piano to give it a funky backdrop against the green 'astro turf'. The warm glow of the afternoon spring sunshine gave me a perfect opportunity to photograph one of our 'Golden Tickets'.

During the filming a voice to my left caught my attention with the words '"That's My Piano" and 'untold story' unfolded which I caught on camera as I panned over to my left.

Mairéad Sheerin, the lady in the video and whose piano I was filming, is Artistic Director of The Blackheath Conservatoire Of Music. Mairéad kindly agreed to be on camera to tell 'The Untold Story of The Blackheath Piano'.

This moment made me realise how far removed my teenage days were from the music I now love and it reminded me of a piano performance by James Brown where he breaks away from his usual centre stage performance to jam on keys alongside fellow musician Bootsy Collins. It wasn't lost on me how far my musical journey had taken me from my days of a teenager growing up in Blackheath to my later discovery of Raregroove and the extraordinary life journey it took me on.

Raregrooves are born during magical moments in a musicians career when everything aligns to hit the sweet spot: performance, musicianship, funky syncopation, a rhythm that skips, individuality, a heavy bass line – and this performance is no exception.

In the video clips we see James Brown with a blank music score, a man whose body is his instrument, the piano amplifying the flow of his life-force – it was a life dedicated to bringing the world 'Funk', a new style of music that broke away from the traditional 4-4 rhythm of Pop and chart music.

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Stephen Rumney, 20.03.2022.

Blackheath Conservatoire
https://www.conservatoire.org.uk