Sonic Evolution: Lord of The Northern Dance

Northern Soul’s influence on contemporary culture is often overlooked. The movement - characterised by mod and post-mod fashion (Ben Sherman polos, skinheads, and flare trouser uniform), all-night amphetamine raves and (God forbid!) the birth of the antagonising ‘music snob’ - grounds the club and music culture as we know it. Whether that be the politics of DJing and vinyl, the creation of music venues or the idea of musical demographics and subcultures – truly Northern Soul was leading the way as far as counter-culture is concerned.

Northern Soul was a short-lived movement from the late 60s into the 70s that captured a political zeitgeist of Britain contextually and paid homage to the forgotten sounds of black American artists mostly from automobile capitals of Chicago and Detroit.

Northern Soul first began as a cultural movement in response to the working-class man’s economic circumstances. Emerging in the late 1960s and coming fully to fruition in the 70s the scene embodied a demographic of economically disillusioned workers amid riots, recession, unemployment, mine closures, the rise of the far right and football hooligans dictating rebellious discourses and music trends.

The 1970s Granada TV Documentary ‘This England: Northern Soul’ captures the Billy Elliot-Esque demographic of the original Northern Soul scene following the decimation of the British industrial heartlands in the 70s:

The music style can partly be understood as a countermovement to the ‘hippification’ of the mainstream music scene in the UK contextually, as charts became infiltrated by psychedelic rock in middle-class circles and particularly in London. Keb Darge, a DJ at the time reports: ‘[Northern Soul was] for the people who wanted your more honest life, didn’t like hippie music, and thought ‘fuck this shite’, and so wanted to hear this soul stuff.’

The epithet ‘Northern Soul’ emanated from Soul City record shop in Covent Garden, London, run by famous soul music collector Dave Godin. Godin said he had coined the term for when the Northern football fans would come to London to watch the games and would come into the store to buy records. The Northern fans weren’t interested in chart music but instead in old soul and niche Motown tracks.

In this sense, the idea that Northern Soul is a self-contained genre is incorrect because rather the categorisation is a complex branch of 1950/60s Motown – a subculture and a parochial nightclub scene. Northern Soul is typified by fast tempo beats and upbeat soul tracks with a BPM of 100 and above, but also as a code of dressing, bowling bags stuffed with talcum powder to keep dancefloors smooth, vest tops, wide-leg trousers and a way of interacting, dancing, and behaving.

Since the movement was cultural rather than a genre the music varied massively from tracks like Frank Wilson’s ‘Do I Love You' to Gloria Jones’ ‘Tainted Love’.

Everything about the movement was niche: from the import of vinyl to the clubs where Northern Soul could be heard:

Venues became iconised as churches for Northern Soul fans, with young people travelling all over the country to visit washed-up northern ballrooms and old working men’s clubs like Wigan Casino, The Torch in Stoke-on-Trent, The Blackpool Mecca and Manchester’s Twisted Wheel. These venues created their sew-on patches which were key to belonging and akin to 90s rock band T-shirts. Sew-on patches distinguished those within the Northern Soul cliques and one’s status within the said realm. While most of these venues didn’t have alcohol licences, they were able to stay open until the early hours of the morning, often not starting until 2 am and finishing at 8 am, furthermore they could fill up to a capacity of 2000 people.

There are lots of parallels to be drawn between Northern Soul to the boom of the 80s acid house revolution and the 90s underground rave scene like that of the Hacienda. Moreover, Northern Soul has been credited as the precursor of modern dance clubs with its fashionable cliques fuelled by illicit amphetamines.

At these clubs DJs would introduce audiences to the rarest vinyl, often introducing songs under false names to protect the track's exclusivity, much like the early reggae sound system scene in Jamaica. Northern Soul’s aim was exclusivity focussing on American singles recorded in the 1950s or early 60s that were hardly sold or were small regional movers, clubs became associated with records that were almost exclusively in their playlists and were so rare that only a handful of copies were known to exist. Often DJs would travel to the US to be the first to get their hands on original vinyl from old warehouse stock to gain reputation and establish themselves within the club scene. Many of the original singers and musicians remained unaware of their newfound popularity for many years.

Dancing and shuffling were also huge parts of the Northern Soul movement characterised by clapping, stomping and high kicking. The dancing style was iconic and energetic due to the upbeat sounds but also because of the drugs that most enthusiasts were keenly taking.

Predictably the underground scene of teenagers dancing and taking drugs till the early hours of the morning did not go unnoticed and would soon become Northern Soul’s hubris. Many venues shut down like Manchester’s The Twisted Wheel in 1971 surrounded by moral panic from the police. Stoke-on-Trent was next in 1973 when the council refused to renew the clubs' license due to drug-taking and overcrowding, Wigan soon became one of the only clubs left standing and so the Casino club became the hub of Northern Soul. Yet by the 1980s the police revoked the clubs' license and so by the early 80s the Northern Soul scene had been fully oppressed.

The sonic evolution series is a collection of longer written pieces devoted to aspects of music history that ground contemporary trends and sounds. So far, I have covered Pirate Radio, Synthesisers and Dubstep. As a Mancunian, Northern Soul is a subculture and sounds close to my heart. Northern Soul remains an iconic and contentious point in history for many reasons:

Firstly, the subculture embodies teenage rebellion and rejection of European Americanisation of the time. Instead of importing Elvis, Jefferson Airplane or The Doors northern teens demanded the underground and independent sounds of non-commercial artists. Moreover, Northern Soul transgresses into the politics of music appreciation and appropriation. The context of the movement also brings to light the microeconomics of a post-war Britain in economic collapse. Trying to understand the subculture and its interrelations can conflate the impact this movement had on the music industry, but in the context of the subcultures that followed Northern Soul – it becomes a period of music history to appreciate for all it stood to challenge and embrace.