REMEMBERING DJ AND ACTIVIST DAVE WATTS


It’s with great sad­ness that I Am Hip Hop Magazine announces the passing of musi­cian, pro­moter, DJ and act­iv­ist Dave Watts of Fun-Da-Men­tal.

I first met Dave in 2017 in a bar in East Ham. It was the day that the blue plaques for Sam Zaman AKA State of Bengal (RIEP) and Har­oon Sham­sh­er of Joi (RIEP) were unveiled. Many fig­ures of the Asi­an Under­ground scene were in attend­ance. I told Dave that I was a massive fan of Fun-Da-Men­tal and he respon­ded that he was a fan of Fun-Da-Men­taltoo and then he joined the band.

Fun-Da-Men­tal were formed in 1991 by Aki Nawaz and were often labelled as the Asi­an Pub­lic Enemy. Their music was described as Hip Hop, World Fusion, Asi­an Under­ground and Ethno-techno and would fea­ture samples of Mal­com Xspeeches blast­ing over tab­las and Qawwali music.

Brit­ish born Dave Watts of Bar­ba­di­an ori­gin, lived in Lon­don where accord­ing to his bio he “…toyed with crys­tal radio sets and caught early trans­mis­sions of BBC Radio 1 & the sounds of the Six­ties. His early child­hood influ­ences included Jimi Hendrix (Espe­cially the song She went to bed with my gui­tar)and Funkadel­ic. In a record selec­tion video for the Hey Boy Hey Girl record store, Dave would say “As black artists, they tran­scen­ded what they were sup­posed to play, theres this thinking where black artists are sup­posed to play a cer­tain type of music like R&B, Soul…they broke that kind of thinking.”

He also cited Pub­lic Enemy as a key influence; 

“Hip Hop was very import­ant to me…the Rap scene was more like party music and Public Enemy brought black con­scious­ness to what was hap­pen­ing all around the world, they were very much influ­enced by the teach­ings of Mal­colm  X and the Nation of Islam and on the pro­duc­tion side there was that eth­os of sampling and their music was like a clash.”

He moved to Toronto and then Morocco before com­ing back to Lon­don in 1988. He star­ted his career as a pro­moter for Vir­gin Records, rep­res­ent­ing artists such as Ice‑T, Iggy Pop, Bad Brains, Snoop Dog, Guru and Herbie Han­cock. He would men­tion the repeated play­ing of Massive Attack in the Vir­gin Records Office in 1991 and in a Face­book post last month he wrote about vis­it­ing Neneh Cherry’s house around that time­and the music­al cre­ativ­ity that came from there.

Face­book trib­utes are pour­ing in as I write this, many men­tion­ing Dave’s ener­get­ic and for­mid­able stage pres­ence and also his kind­ness and humour. DJ Dani Camer­onmen­tioned Dave’s intense dan­cing as a fan right in the front atearly ON‑U Sound gigs before he ended up col­lab­or­at­ing with Adri­an Sherwood.

Dave Watts joined Fun-Da-Men­tal in 1993, the story goes that Aki Nawaz went up to Dave who was DJing and handed him­some Fun-Da-Men­tal vinyl. Dave brought this to Vir­gin Records’ atten­tion and then became a mem­ber of the band ini­tially serving as the DJ, where Years of record­ing samples from films, doc­u­ment­ar­ies, live radio broad­casts, tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions etc, mak­ing loops on cas­sette, came to use bey­ond mix­tapes.

He then took up vocal, instru­ment and pro­duc­tion duties on Fun-Da-Mental’s debut album Seize the Time and live shows.Seize the Time was released in 1994 and was named after the book by Black Pan­thers co-founder Bobby Seale. The album is a spit fire col­lage of samples mix­ing break­beats with Afric­an and Carib­bean music and tabla and Bol­ly­wood films with rap­ping by MC Mushtaq. It’s a key text in not only the Asi­an Under­ground but Brit­ish Asi­an Music and UK Hip Hop. The album fam­ously includes the track Dog Tribe which had its video banned by MTV and fea­tured an actu­al record­ing of an answer­ing machine mes­sage left by the far-right group Com­bat 18 threat­en­ing violence.

Dave would con­tin­ue work­ing with Fun-Da-Men­tal and col­lab­or­at­ing with mem­bers of On‑U Sound, Sys­tem 7 and the Drum Club as part of the Retri­bu­tion pro­ject in 1994. He would also con­tin­ue DJing under his ali­as D.WattsRiot.

On his DJing, Fari Brad­ley would state; “In all my life, in all my travels I have nev­er seen any­one DJ like that, with every fibre and sinew, imp­ishly, pro­voc­at­ively dan­cing, listen­ing, in essence Watts was “present­ing” the music rather than just play­ing it out on a sound sys­tem. He was more alive than the wires car­ry­ing the sound to the speak­ers, or the waves of sound com­ing at us from them. He WAS the music. And that made us dance all the more.”

A col­lab­or­a­tion with DJ Over­haul led to the Nation Records World Ser­vice pro­ject and the track Skank­ing for Jul­lander in 2000; “We took like 70 samples and put them into the machine and then we came up with this little 6 minute ditty that in a way harks back to Fatboy Slim Big Beat, a dance floor frenzy kind of thing.”

After a Fun-Da-Men­tal per­form­ance at WOMAD in Las Pal­mas. Dave resided in Ten­erife where he hos­ted radio shows and took up DJ res­id­en­cies. He was the co-cur­at­or of the Clandes­tino Fest­iv­al in Gothen­borg, Sweden for nine years (2007–2016). He also co-cur­ated the Ker­ox­en Fest­iv­al in Tenerife.

The eth­os of col­lab­or­a­tion that star­ted with Fun-Da-Men­talwas car­ried over into Dave’s ali­as KingL Man.

To quote the KingL Man bio in full – KingL Man is a vehicle of one that is nailed to a wall of won­der­ment and dis­gust. Mes­sages pro­pelled by the kick drum fused with sounds sampled from cracked vinyl or found in aban­doned build­ings lib­er­ate a torched soul. 
KingL Man is not a claim to roy­alty, it’s where his­tory’s pres­ence forms a let­ter of appre­ci­ation for hav­ing wit­nessed good­ness and great­ness. We don’t do silence. 

The first release under this ali­as appeared in Septem­ber 2015 trough Watt’s own label and pro­mo­tion Ear Con­di­tion­ing. The track Vul­tures’ Bazaar fea­tured reg­gae artist Earl 16 whose Motown-esque vocals provided a link to Dave’s form­at­ive influ­ences of 60s music and Dub. Anoth­er early release was Ossie Speaks For Mal­colm X. It fea­tured the eulogy that was delivered by Ossie Dav­is at the funer­al of Mal­colm X.

2007 saw the online release of The Guevara Con­ven­tion, com­mem­or­at­ing the 40th anniversary of the death of Cuban revolu­tion­ary Che Guevara. A com­pil­a­tion album fea­tur­ing tracks by his friends and music­al col­lab­or­at­ors that was released online after a label couldn’t be found. Our small team has tried to get record com­pany interest in this but it has not mater­i­al­ized, which in real­ity is how it´s sup­posed to be.”

Ques­tions on the nature of real­ity and the mater­i­al pep­per Dave’s work and writ­ings as well as his lifelong advocacy for glob­al struggles par­tic­u­larly the cause of Palestini­ans. Dave had a Fano­ni­an out­look with regards to mil­it­ant action “There has to be some under­stand­ing of where those who have tried to dis­cuss have ended up – ready to do viol­ence and blow upbuildings…We have to fight for peace.”

I saw Dave again in 2018 at the inaug­ur­al Mishti Dance, the first ever club night I had organ­ised. He insisted on buy­ing a tick­et des­pite my offer of comping him. We would sub­sequently cor­res­pond online about music and politics.

A com­pil­a­tion of his earli­er KingL Man work entitled — Hard Drive Mas­sacre 2006-2008 fol­lowed in 2020 and the first full length KingL Man album titled Headonix was released in 2022. The album was widely praised, with The Wire magazine call­ing it ...an album that upends ideas about glob­al music, bring­ing in a stun­ningly wide array of voices and col­lab­or­at­ors to cre­ate an album sim­ul­tan­eously place­less yet crammed with dis­sid­ence and res­ist­ance.

Dave Watts was pro­lif­ic in his act­iv­ism and youth edu­ca­tion.Dhang­sha aka Dr Das from Asi­an Dub Found­a­tion who was a friend, col­lab­or­at­or and one time label mate in Nation Recordsrecalled that; Three years ago, he invited me to lead a work­shop with migrant youth… he was com­mit­ted to doing some­thing pos­it­ive for the youths who lived in dreary con­di­tions in one loc­a­tion in Ten­erife, which was a stop­ping point for migrants before being re-alloc­ated else­where in Spain. The work­shop was organ­ised in con­junc­tion with Ker­ox­en Festival.”

Anoth­er found­ing mem­ber of Asi­an Dub Found­a­tion, DeedarZaman statedDave Watts was a huge inspir­a­tion to me and the best friend. I will miss you and I wish you all the best.

Dave’s recent Face­book posts out­lined his battle with can­cer, his phrase “F*ck Can­cer.” trended amongst our mutu­al friends. Dave con­tin­ued to be fiercely polit­ic­al to the very end, call­ing out the war crimes of Israel and the US. There were also anec­dotes from his time in the music industry and he would share some of his favour­ite records.

The whole of Ossie Dav­is’ obit­u­ary to Mal­com X can eas­ily apply to Dave Watts and it’s worth quot­ing the clos­ing lines in full.

Mal­colm was our man­hood, our liv­ing, black man­hood! This was his mean­ing to his people. Con­sign­ing these mor­tal remains to earth, the com­mon moth­er of all, secure in the know­ledge that what we place in the ground is no more now a man but a seed which, after the winter of our dis­con­tent, will come forth again to meet us. And we will know him then for what he was and is. A prince. Our own black shin­ing prince who did­n’t hes­it­ate to die because he loved us so.

Dave Watts is sur­vived by his wife Beat­riz López who pos­ted a mov­ing trib­ute on social media.

Rest in Etern­al Power Dave Ken­more Watts AKA Blacka‑D AKA Impi‑D AKA KingL Man!

 

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DJ ISURU

DJ Isuru is a music journ­al­ist and broad­caster on SOAS Radio. He also runs the Mishti Dance event series fea­tur­ing the best in Asi­an Under­ground. www.mishtidance.com

About DJ ISURU

DJ Isuru is a music journalist and broadcaster on SOAS Radio. He also runs the Mishti Dance event series featuring the best in Asian Underground. www.mishtidance.com