Night moves
On the longest day of the year, some reflections on the loss of night
What is a ‘night out’?
It’s dark at 4pm in winter. But you’re not on a night out then. Then again, a night out could start then — perhaps it’s the transition from an ‘all dayer’. The night out, despite the changing nature of where and how we work, is still built around the typical 9–5 week. It’s about meeting up with friends after work or at the weekend, usually in the city centre. It’s about staying up until the early hours. And, of course, as we cast off our isolating headphones of the day, it’s about music — reanimated as a shared and embodied experience that floods out onto luminous city streets.
Well… usually, that is. Today, even the hardiest table bookers, house-party rule benders and sit-down ravers know: the ‘stay at home’ order may be over, but lockdown comes at night.
As we fumble around in the darkness of Covid society, much of what we seek is locked away in the simple, age-old act of enjoying music together at night.
We innately know what this experience gives us. To put it simply, live music is fun. And that’s what makes the live music industry worth billions, along with the entertainment and alcohol industry that usually converge with live music: the cover band, the karaoke session, the jukebox singalongs.
But I haven’t yet seen a good mainstream articulation about what underpins that fun. I keep waiting for UK Music, the Night-Time Industries Association, or the AIF to come through but it never materialises. Last year, I wrote about the importance of storytelling over statistics when making a case for funding or, say, a government-backed insurance scheme. Yet, despite such a high-profile intervention (37 views, 19 reads) the conversation is still stuck in a frame of consumption. If it stays there, we will never fully appreciate, or properly defend, the culture that thrives at night.
There’s a reason that our cultural practice of music at night has endured for centuries. The first recorded example is the Ancient Greek symposia, though early human communities did this as part of ritual. The dawn of electric street lighting created a ‘new frontier’ of night and we haven’t looked back since. We, subconsciously at least, understand the night as a ‘container’; a place where transgression, entertainment, hedonism, pleasure and mischief merge, allowing us to reclaim the city, on our own terms, from the working day.
Of course, within the current rules, I could see a chamber music concert tonight. That’s a huge stride forward and no doubt I’d get a lot out of it: appreciation, awe, relaxation — maybe even transcendence. But we still can’t access participative performance: where the delineation between performer and audience is blurred; where the experience is co-created. Clubbing or live popular music are the best examples. A full-bodied, super-sensory, social experience where the boundaries between friends and strangers merges as the ‘crowd’ is formed.
It’s here that, for me, the opportunities for transcendence are even greater than what we’re told is ‘high culture’. Where you dance together for hours; where you look across and see someone else loving that obscure tune you thought only moved you; where you see the older ravers alongside the younger generation and feel your faith in society being restored bit by bit. Want to remind yourself what that feels like? Re-watch the test event footage from the greatest city on Earth.
This gets to the heart our spiritual and urban malaise. The city won’t be revived until we reclaim its nocturnal nature. To quote Maya Angelou: “if you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going”. We kid ourselves that we know of the night-time city by looking at it through the lens of the ‘night-time economy’ — a completely useless phrase devoid of any richness or meaning.
I’ll say it again: we need to start telling better stories. We need to start fighting for the night, moving the conversation to a frame of togetherness, wellbeing and vitality. You want to know what makes the post-Covid city interesting? It’s not the cookie-cutter WeWorks, empty office blocks or yet another Turtle Bay. Berlin, New York, London, Liverpool, Detroit, Glasgow — no-one says ‘I can’t wait to move/visit there for the excellent office space’. It’s nonsense! We want to experience culture together, to feel that sense of togetherness, of wonder, of learning something new about ourselves and each other.
Participative performance affords a unique experience that we desperately need back in our lives. For me, it’s the jewel in the crown of culture. (Conveniently, football can be crowbarred into this schema too). But let’s not forget film, theatre, comedy or cookery either: it’s all different once the sun sets. Somehow more exciting, more meaningful. When the urban night returns, let’s endeavour to reflect on what makes it so special. It is, after all, tantalisingly close.
