Johnny Zee / Songs for Our Daughters / The Feelgood Factor

Band, audience, dancers, photographs, cityscape, etc. John Mostyn, Music Publisher, talking about meeting Johnny and Kendall, and being excited by their mixture of bhangra and reggae music. Intercut with shots of band in changing rooms, Johnny in recording studio, all VO. Johnny Zee talking about his career, and how he composes; his collaboration with Kendall; the fusion of Punjabi and English in the lyrics. Intercut with shots of him playing with his dog, playing keyboards, Kendall, Johnny and Kendall in studio, all VO. Kendall talks about his own patois contribution, and taking his own sound to audiences, maintaining his identity. His VO street scenes, builder’s yard. Band playing in builder’s warehouse. Johnny about his background and the difficulty this caused with his family. Intercut with photos of his parents, the family builder’s yard, Johnny in studio, with his girlfriend, all VO. Mostyn says Johnny will have to get away from his family in order to find his audience. Johnny says he can’t abandon his music. The band in performance. Women talking. Pregnant woman in rocking chair. Lisa Crook says people always ask where she’s from – half Guyanese and half English. Mavis Crook-Massey says she’s much lighter-skinned than her other children. Woman and daughter playing hand-clapping game. Carolyn Ebanks talking about mixed-race children, how she wants to give hers a balance of both cultures, and how she points out to them that images in Africa will be of black people while those in Britain will be of whites. Woman reading in dialect to her daughter. Ebanks talking about the need to find books with black characters, black dolls, etc. Woman and daughter. Crook-Massey talking about the difficulties of replacing her hsuband’s potato diet with rice back in the 1950s. Ebanks on making Grenadan gungo pea soup. Woman and daughter shopping for fruit, confronted by black and white people who all complain about the mixed race child. Crook on being light skinned. Her mother tells a story about two women talking about the pair of them. Crook talking about going to Mexico with a Jamaican friend who was ignored by the local people. Ebanks on not wanting her children to believe they were better because they were lighter skinned. Crook doesn’t want to be categorised. Ebanks’s children; she says whatever choices they make, she’ll be there to support them. Woman and daughter. VO says there is a debate about the cultural value of crime thriller by black writers. Steve Pope, Publisher, the X Press, talks about a new style of crime writing Victor Headley’s Yardie, Donald Gorgon’s Cop Killer, Moss Side Massive. Dramatised sequence from Cop Killer. David Upshal, Critic, suggests these books are pulp fiction. Peter Kalu, Author of Lick Shot, also critical of the literary value of some of the books. Upshal: these books represent a very narrow part of black experience. Lee Pinkerton, Journalist, says no book can represent the whole of the black community, and people want to read about this small portion. Discussion continues with Upshall, Pinkerton and Kalu intercut giving opinions of on the undesirability of repeating stereotypes about black people as gangsters, the books being mainly about criminal activity, and there not being enough other books to balance; the universality of some of the themes in the books; one book offering the political message that black people need to organise in order to resist, having a high ranking policeman character being a good thing. Dramatised sequence from Lick Shot, in which DCI Patterson visits Frankie, a police informer. Kalu believes two major themes of his book are justice and the struggle to maintain moral integrity. Cast. Credits.

Cast for Lick Shot excerpt:
DCI Reid, Howard Evans;
DCI Patterson, Nana Osei Bentil;
Frankie, Freddie Brookes;
Cop Killer, Paul Turner.

JOHNNY ZEE
Directed by Ruppert Gabriel.
Produced in association with Kershaw Production Associates.

SONGS FOR OUR DAUGHTERS
Directed by Jillian Li-Sue;
Collaborator Jan Blake.

THE FEELGOOD FACTOR
Directed by Ade Adepegba;
Music Composed by Amanda Vincent.
Synchro Graphics Carlton Design;
Production Co-ordinators Ajay Parekh;
Executive Producer for the Arts Council Rodney Wilson;
Line Producer Stella Nwimo;
Series Producer Simon Onwurah.
© Arts Council of England MCMXCV.
A Non-Aligned Communications Production in association with The Arts Council of England and Carlton UK Productions.
A Carlton Programme.