Bill Bryson and Grime

I spent last evening re-watching a documentary series produced in 1999 by Granada Television, called Notes from a Small Island. It was hosted by Bill Bryson and based on his book of the same name. Following from the same internal reasoning that has allowed me to avoid ever seeing Titanic, I had assiduously avoided reading any of Bryson's incredibly popular books, mostly dedicated to travel. (I have recently read A Short History of Nearly Everything, his foray into science writing which seems to have garnered him equal acclaim in that arena -- it was folksy, witty and entertaining, which I guess is what most people want in their reading material, no?)

Anyhow, it was pleasant to watch the show with a friend of mine, a woman who has a distinct bent for the idyllic, old-fashioned and prelapsarian, and who loved the depiction of village life and the twee, gentle characterization of the English people as a bunch of lovable hobbits, cabbies and other eccentrics that were -- Bryson channels Goldilocks here -- "just right", And admittedly, for the most part I enjoy that too, being somewhat of an Anglophile.

But the thing that struck me as odd was how strange and narrow the focus of the 6-part documentary series was. In one of the few moments that seemed to admit to the changing nature of Britain, especially of its larger cities, Bryson makes a mild reference to the multiculturalism that's more and more evident, with the briefest flashes of coloured faces. Very quickly, however, it returns back to the very white and very traditional vision of Avalon. Keep in mind that this documentary was made in 1999.

After having my head filled with visions of cheerful cricket players, Welsh bards in the outer Hebrides and posh princess daughters of rich magnates, it's jarring to see the poverty and drug use that gets elided in Bryson's happily naive vision of the Isles. Illiterate kids in East London, making music with cracked computer software and broadcasting on pirate radio. It sounds a little like the early era of hip hop, birthed out of the inner city ghettoes of the Bronx. This new wave is less Peace, Love, Unity and Having Fun, in the words of Afrika Bambaataa, and more about sheer, nerve-jangling bravado. This is one of the heavy influences of modern British youth, a weird America-through-the-looking glass ethos that has also given rise to the chav.

I'd avoided listening to the music that goes by the name "grime" (or "sublow" or "eski" or another half-dozen also-rans), in much the same way that I had managed to never read a Bill Bryson travelogue, but that photo series by Simon Wheatley got me intrigued again, and late to the game, I went and listened to the Run The Road grime compilations and discovered that there was more to it than the nails-on-blackboard voice of Dizzee Rascal. It's got all the sonic bombast of hip hop, borrows liberally from the guttural soundclash patois of dancehall and rides clattery club beats that point to its debt to UK Garage, birthed in a youth culture that seems completely at odds with Bryson's nostalgic vision of England.

Without commenting on the positives and negatives of the social upheaval that is sure to continue for the next few decades and as much as I enjoyed the sun-dappled portrait of Britain in Bryson's work (the book was voted as the top depiction of the English, by the English -- wishful thinking or biased poll?), Notes was a facile vision of a country, a sort of secular restorationism exhibited in other forms, particularly in James Kunstler's constant derision of modern architecture. It's the same thing that gives rise to people's musical conservatism ("everything except rap and country") and a variety of limited worldviews.

What I see here is two competing visions of a country, neither perfect -- one which wants to hold fast to a beautiful world of ritual and history that may no longer exist in half a century's time, and another which voraciously consumes everything in its path, multifarious, narcotized, oblivious to tradition, but capable of stunning innovation and energy. Can they ever hope to live together?