Opinion: The Underground Always Finds A Way

Late last year, I had a long phone conversation with MC Chickaboo, the first female jungle and Drum & Bass MC.

“It’s these millionaire businessmen,” she said in her Birmingham accent. “They’ve taken over our nightclubs and our record labels. It’s all about money. It’s nothing to do with the culture. They’ve never been to a rave. They’ve never been to [Notting Hill] carnival. They wouldn’t dare.”

It’s fair to say MC Chickaboo is the embodiment of underground culture. She is the original pioneer of Drum & Bass and jungle, and she knows first-hand how culture is created. 

When Chickaboo was a teenager, UK club culture was all cocktail dresses and mirror bars. “They didn’t let Black people into the clubs at all,” she told me.

Back then, sound systems were one of the very few places Black folk in Britain could celebrate their culture and roots, and this culture was forced to develop outside of mainstream club spaces.

“That’s how the rave culture came. It was anarchist, free party, squat people joining up with the sound systems. So it comes from where we’re at right now. We needed a venue, so we broke into factories.”

Chickaboo joined a reggae and soul sound system, and soon started messing around on the microphone, sometimes actively wrestling it away from the men. Soon, she was being asked to MC at parties and nights across the UK including Fantasia, Dreamscape and Jungle Fever, usually while G.E. Real DJed. From there, she went on to make history as an icon of the underground.

Back when Chickaboo was MCing at a 50-cap basement in Brixton, she could never have imagined that very same music would be played in stadiums 30 years later alongside pyrotechnics, LED light shows and fireworks that explode every time the bass drops. She could never have imagined the music that was created as a reaction to being excluded from club spaces would be commodified to high heaven today. 

“So 30 years later, here we are,” she said with a sigh. “But that punk, anarchist, anti-establishment energy isn’t going anywhere.  And forget the money, we haven’t got any, so let’s do it because we want to rave and party and celebrate and connect. I have hope that spark will never go out. That is the very essence of the underground. House, techno, jungle, D&B, ballroom culture, and so much more, exist because marginalised communities were pushed out of conventional spaces, and had no choice but to create their own."

Chickaboo's point, and mine, is this: true, authentic, underground culture cannot be squeezed into non-existence. That pressure simply turns it into liquid gold. 

I’m a fairly optimistic person, but even by my standards, it’s difficult to stay positive when faced with the sobering statistics surrounding global club culture. 

Last year, CGA Neilson reported 11-night clubs shut down every month in the UK, including adored underground institutions The Wire in Leeds and IKLECTIK's home in Waterloo. Just this week, the intimate and beloved Hackney venue The Gun — a cultural hotspot that has hosted sets from the likes of Daniel Avery, DJ Python, Marie Davidson, ALFOS, and countless more — shuttered for good, citing "unsustainable rising costs." The combination of sky-high overheads, increased cost of living and changing behaviours has taken a major toll on mid-level and grassroots venues, and forced many clubs and promoters to pack it in permanently.

It isn’t just a UK problem. There’s now a literal gravestone outside much-loved Berlin club Watergate (RIP), and Salon der Wilde Renate has announced they’ll be closing their doors at the end of 2025, after losing a lease battle with real estate firm The Padovicz Group. This year, Berlin’s cultural budget was cut by 12%, an equivalent loss of around €130 million.

Another issue is the change in people's habits. Gen Z drink less, and prefer to save up to go to one big event than go to smaller club nights more regularly. In the UK, super clubs like Drumsheds and Printworks sell out regularly, and it’s a pattern that’s reflected State-side, too. Large venues like Brooklyn Mirage and Sphere in Las Vegas have become cultural mainstays, with people spending their hard-earned cash on one whopping night out. But where does that leave the grassroots underground?

Well, fucked, according to Night Time Industries Association (NTIA). By their calculations, we might not have any night clubs left by 31st December 2029. We’ll be seeing in the new decade at home alone on the sofa with a couple of dry Jacob's crackers and half a glass of nosecco. 

The thing is, I just don’t believe that will happen. Underground culture always finds a way. It thrives in the margins. In fact, it’s often at its best when forced out of conventional spaces.

While MC Chickaboo was re-writing cultural history back in the ‘90s, NYC’s underground was facing its own crisis in the form of a man called Rudy Giuliani. One of the first things he did when he stepped into his role of mayor of New York City in 1994 was declare war on nightlife.

Not long ago, I was on the phone with Mark Baker, AKA the Godfather of New York Nightlife. Mark was the architect of New York’s club scene from the ‘80s to the 2000s. He was responsible for Lotus, Double Seven, The Mansion, and the Bowery Bar, and Metro C.C., which just happened to be the first night club in Manhattan that Giuliani shut down.

“So we all had to move around the city and find clubs and venues that were not going to disturb the neighbourhood communities,” he told me. “So we were searching for places to open clubs, and we all got pushed out to the lower West Side of Manhattan, in what is now known as the Meatpacking District.”

Lotus was the first night club to open in that neighbourhood, quickly followed by the opening of Cielo by Nicholas Matar, followed by Cro Bar. Giuliani’s disco task force weren’t interested in that district, so these clubs were able to flourish away from the prying eyes of the authorities. "They chased us all over New York but they could never shut us down,” Mark told me. “We just kept opening new clubs.”

Give the underground lemons, it makes lemonade.

We’re already seeing this in action today. Take Gaffe, for example, a brand new 150 capacity nightclub in South West London. It’s “a new home for the heads,” fitted out with a Funktion-One soundsystem, and when artists like Lukas Wigflex, Hodge and Danielle aren’t tearing up the dance floor they host photography sessions, DJ workshops, yoga classes and creative meet ups. 

Their social channels state explicitly that Gaffe is a reaction to the club crisis. “In a time when London’s night clubs are shifting towards impersonal mega-clubs, someone has to step in to bring back intimate spaces that offer immersive, music-centred experiences,” they wrote.

Who knows what friendships, collaborations, ideas and communities will emerge from this refurbished tunnel next to Wandsworth Bridge Road? There’s no knowing what magic will take form and change culture permanently.

What Gaffe understands is that for culture to thrive it needs community. Now, they have a physical space to cultivate that, but with 11 venues closing every week, what happens when there isn’t one?

Ask Pull-Up Recordings. They’re a nation-wide crew of bass heads, formed in 2019 by Sam Southan and John Lewis when they were just 18. Pull-Up Recordings is a label and event series, and community lies at the heart of everything they do. 

This crew is from Cardiff, Wales, where almost every underground venue has closed down. But they don’t let that stop them. Instead they get innovative, and throw jam-packed events in unconventional spots including a skate park, a burrito bar and a skate shop. They host regular run clubs which helps build their community and they have an annual festival called GemFest which originally started as a teammate’s birthday party and soon evolved into a giant D&B extravaganza.

History shows us that game-changing shifts in underground culture happen when communities are forced to think outside the box. Ask MC Chickaboo, or Ellen Allien, or Larry Levan. Or look at Dialled In, Queer House Party and PXSSY PALACE, arguably the most raucous cultural events in the UK’s underground, all of which were formed to create safer spaces and centre BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ communities.

That’s not to say clubs should simply accept their fate; it’s devastating when beloved cultural spaces close, and many people lose their life savings and livelihoods as a result. The work that bodies like Free the Night, Clubcommission Berlin e.V., NTIA, and NYC Nightlife United do to lobby for better nightlife conditions and protect cultural institutions is absolutely critical, and we must do everything we can to support them. But we shouldn’t give up hope. Underground culture isn’t going anywhere, and no matter the obstacles, it will always find a way to thrive.