The sound of summer on Camberwell Green has a twin heartbeat – two decks and two selectors. Marie Staunton meets Dubplate Pearl and Mr Swing Easy who bring a lifelong love of music to every set they play
Pearl
Pearl Boatswain grew up in Shepherd’s Bush in a house full of records. Her parents came from Carriacou in the Grenadines. Her father loved Ray Charles and the big bands, and her mother played the Small Faces and Aretha Franklin. On Sundays the GEC radiogram glowed warm and wooden, bass humming through the floorboards. Saturday was Shepherd’s Bush Market to listen at shop booths to the newest rock steady reggae and soul. In 1974, aged 16, Pearl bought her first record – Wicky Wacky by the Fatback Band: “Proper classic soul,” she says. “Danceable, good instrumentation, good musicianship.” She went to Notting Hill Carnival every year where Pearl and her friends followed the dub, instrumental versions of songs. Sometimes the police hassled them. But the reggae played on. For five decades she worked as a legal PA, buying three or four records a week, preferably vinyl because “it’s not condensed like a CD. You can hear all the instruments”. The weekends were for dressing-up and dancing. In 2010 friends persuaded her to try DJing. She was the only woman behind the decks at the Emerald Centre in Hammersmith. The next year the Carnival legend Jah Observer threw his retirement party in Brixton and asked aspiring DJs to bring two records. When it was her turn to play, she was asked her name and Pearl invented one on the spot – Dubplate Pearl and chose Never Get Burn by the reggae band Twinkle Brothers. The crowd demanded encores. Five times. That night she wasn’t just playing records; she was claiming space as a mature female selector. Since then, she’s played at clubs, radio shows and venues across London, been featured in The Guardian, spoken at Goldsmiths University, and inspired new female DJs. She left her legal career to work at Lion Vibes, the reggae-vinyl shop in Brixton Village – earning a fraction of the salary but finding real excitement. After Guardian journalist Dave Katz invited her to play at Dub Me Always night at the Ritzy, the cinema bar began hosting a monthly all-female selector night where the decks pass from one woman to the next. Check out Revival is survival https://dubplatepearl.co.uk/ where Pearl and female selectors Rasta Queen and Texas Ranger reflect on their struggles as women within sound system culture.
Toby
Toby Broom’s path was different. He grew up in Kent, the child of East London parents and a sister who brought home Motown Chartbusters and Tighten Up compilations. At Southampton University he escaped the student circuit and wandered into a West Indian club one Friday-curry goat in the kitchen The Whip, by reggae roots band The Ethiopians closing every night : “Absolutely brilliant sound,” he recalls, and promptly began his collection which now numbers over 2,000 records. His break came in Birmingham, working as a senior manager he noticed an office cleaner, Gareth “GB”, was listening to reggae while he mopped the floors. Toby joined GB’s sound system, starting as a box boy-carrying speakers, fetching cables, waiting his turn. One dawn, at a house party in Aston, he played the Jimmy London reggae version of Bridge Over Troubled Water. The crowd sang every word. He played it again, and again. Now he was a selector. He retrained in education, moved to London and was still playing music as a radio and club DJ when he met Pearl. It was a weeknight at the Railway Telegraph pub in Forest Hill where they played old-time reggae. He noticed her Barbour coat; she noticed that he understood reggae and soul. They bonded over memories of 70s and 80s visits to unlicensed venues – shebeens – down rickety stairs into basements with wires hanging from the ceiling and sawdust on the floor. The light was low, the smoke thick, and the bass heavy enough to shake your lungs. That was where you found the hard core – the best sound systems, the true believers. They started playing together, drawing inspiration from Jah Shaka, the New Cross sound-system pioneer who stayed true to his Rastafarian roots but drew in a new audience. Toby says; “Today reggae’s growth is global” Japanese collectors reissue vintage Jamaican vinyl with meticulous care, and new European sound systems keep the bass rolling across open fields and festival stages. Catch its echoes when the Camberwell Connection spin vinyl every month at their residency at The Bear on the last Friday of the month.
The Camberwell connection
