Dr Phil Frampton Releases “Our Town Now”
Dr Phil Frampton Releases
Powerful & evocative rap/spoken word story track
“Our Town Now”
ft-Ksenia-Dubrovskaya
to coincide with Black History Month.
It directly and uniquely tells the story of how we have begun, despite everything, to move on from the grim 20th-century racist climate.
Artist Bios and the Combination Story
Dr Phil Frampton is a broadcaster, author journalist and lecturer. He has been an avid social campaigner and radical socialist for 50 years. Born in secret in a Cornish home for unmarried mothers, Phil was abandoned to the care system. His Nigerian father had been sent back to Nigeria for having an affair with his White English mother.
Phil grew up in orphanages in Southport, Merseyside where he and his Black friends were almost the only non-Whites in the town. From school he went to university, eventually becoming the Labour Party youth section’s first-ever Black National Chairperson. He spent 20 years of his young life as a full-time professional revolutionary, work which took him to Sri Lanka, Jamaica, the USA and around Europe. Later he turned to journalism and broadcasting. His acclaimed childhood memoir, “The Golly in the Cupboard” and his award-winning BBC radio documentary of the same name were the result.
In 2000, Frampton co-founded The Care Leavers Association: a charity run by and for Care leavers. He was a member of the 2001 Cabinet Office Advisory Group on the Education of Young People in Care, a 2002 Parliamentary Select Committee Witness regarding Police Investigations of Abuse in Care and a Core Participant in the 2014-22 Parliamentary inquiry into child abuse. In 2015, Frampton organised and chaired the two ground-breaking Whiteflowers’ lobbies of Parliament by child abuse survivors, professionals and lawyers.
Frampton presented his Channel 4 Bring Back Orphanages programme in 2007. His second BBC radio documentary, The Crying Shame (2012), focused on the plight of unmarried mothers in the post-war era and, won a commendation in the BBC Gillard Awards.
Interesting Fact: Frampton has very recently released another track, for which he wrote the melody and lyrics to, “I Can’t Sleep ft Sharath Rajah“, a beautiful romantic love song composed 20 years ago on the shores of Kerala in southern India.
In 2005, his radio presentation of BBC Radio Merseyside’s ‘Golly in the Cupboard’ programme (based on his childhood memoir of the same name) won the Commission for Racial Equality’s National Race in the Media Award.
An experienced lecturer, keynote speaker, author, journalist and business consultant, Frampton was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Philosophy by London Metropolitan University in 2016. He was previously made a Research Associate and Honorary Teaching Fellow for the University of London’s Birkbeck College School of Management (2000).
Ksenia Dubrovskaya is an exceptionally talented and charismatic Hamburg-based solo violinist of the new generation. As a soloist, Ksenia performs with world-renowned orchestras under the baton of Saulius Sondeckis, Justus Frantz, Shinik Hahm, Jacek Kaspszyk and Helmut Müller—Brüll and in chamber ensembles around the world with renowned musicians such as Yury Bashmet, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Liana Isakadze, Bruno Canino and Philippe Graffin.
Our Town:
Quick Preview:
“The Nword…sometimes it began with a W, an S or a D,
or it started with the N, a B or a C,
but it all spelt the same to my Black friends and me.
It was the Nword.
We used to scurry round the town, Black children on our own,
Trying to stand our ground but feeling so alone.
Take the bruised black eye but never, never cry.
Punch them in the mouth to stop that word come out………
Phil says his lyrics revisit many Black children’s experience of growing up marginalised and derided in White communities. Combined with virtuoso solo violinist, Ksenia Dubrovskaya‘s (click here for more of her music) subtle interpretation of Glazunov’s renowned, Grand Adagio, I am sure you will find that is a remarkably powerful, yet beautiful and poignant piece of spoken word. Yet you will find that this, piercing narrative is not without hope. The essential message is that through all the past and ongoing struggles, we now live in a society which we feel much more a part of.
With its seemingly contrasting music, the track emphasises both the clash and symbiotic relationship between our urban poor and the urban wealthy, the impoverished minorities and the White majority in the Western world. It contrasts street pugilism with a wealthy refinery. Yet, placing conflict and struggle alongside the refinery of the soul, and finally the triumphant unity, it alludes to the dialectical and unfolding social relationships that make our world what it is.
(Ksenia Dubrovskaya)
Behind the Track: Street vs Classical?
Frampton firmly placed himself in the situationist tradition with ‘The Golly in the Cupboard‘ as the title of his 2004 award-winning childhood memoir of growing up Black in orphanages. In this new work, Frampton, who has an Honorary Doctorate in Philosophy, chose Glazunov’s piece to accompany his narration of “Our Town Now“, not only as a blissful contrast to the life of the oppressed/the street, but also to highlight how behind all the battles of the oppressed is that desire to attain the bliss and comfort, which the casual listener might assume is implied by Glazunov’s masterpiece, as performed by the virtuoso Dubrovskaya.
This dramatic contrast is not so unusual in art. For example, we have Balzac’s murderer, Dodgedeath, who eventually finds himself in the halls of the wealthy. Beauty and the Beast comes to mind as do the beautiful scenes that appear in The Godfather, a tale of brutal Mafiosi and the drunken foul-mouthed peasants who feature in Vivaldi’s sketch of Autumn.
At the same time, the Grand Adagio is drawn from Glazunov’s Raymonda Ballet. Notably also a tale of bitter struggle, it has heavy hints of the racial strife of the Crusades. Frampton says his own piece can be seen as, effectively, part of a Raymonda Ballet sequel part 1, where the ground is being reset so that the races are beginning to achieve a more harmonious existence.
The seemingly gentle classical piece of music starkly contrasts with the almost brutal lyrics yet behind the music lies Glazunov’s Raymonda Ballet tale of as much strife with a deadly ending. In the Ballet, a Saracen (read Black) warlord attempts to steal Raymonda, the betrothed of Jean de Brienne, a French prince (read White) who is off fighting in the Crusades (NB Basically to break the Arab control of the pepper trade).
The Saracen uses all the sorcery and evil powers attributed to the cunning forces of the dark continent in order to make off with the beautiful Raymonda. Ultimately, the Saracen is thwarted and killed by Jean de Brienne’s sword. In this sense, the Ballet tale symbolises the triumph of racial repression. The lyrics of Our Town Now extol the decades of Black struggles to overcome that repression and the triumph being racial unity and equality.
It emphasises that we are made of conflict and struggle and without knowing each other we cannot know ourselves.
(Dr Phil Frampton)
Background and Text Storyline
“Our Town Now” was originally written as spoken word for the UK’s Black History Month, 2022. The phrase “Our Town Now” is a reference to a moment in the lyricist, Frampton’s acclaimed, award-winning childhood memoir, The Golly in the Cupboard.
Frampton and his black friends grew up in an orphanage in the very White English seaside resort of Southport, where they faced almost daily racial prejudice and often outright hostility. In his memoir, Frampton included a poem he had written in the orphanage when he was twelve. It carries the line: “You’ve made me feel an outcast; to all that’s White I kneel.” (NB the opposite meaning to that of Colin Kaepernick’s taking the knee in the USA) On page 297 of his memoir, Frampton recalls returning years later to the town to meet up with his Mixed Race childhood sweetheart. As they walked through the streets, arm in arm, he uttered the words: “It’s our town now”. The phrase reflected their sense of vulnerability, returning self-assured to, and almost ‘bigger’ than the town and its racial prejudices.
The lyrics celebrate coming through from oppression by the social environment to a sense of control, from vulnerability to self-assuredness. The lyrics evoke scenes of e.g., racial bullying and violence, apartheid, racial segregation, Rosa Parkes, MLK, BLM and the progression towards improved racial harmony.
Dr Phil Frampton is also available for interviews and speaking at events. On the funny side, in my many media appearances presenters and producers often refer to me as Peter Frampton – the (White) rock legend being the only Frampton they had ever heard of. Perhaps now the boot will be on the other foot…
Regards
Phil Frampton
To Listen and watch on streaming platforms or to contact Dr Phil Frampton
click the links below
