HERITAGE: Seminal Dance Crew Foot Patrol Help Lay The Black British Foundations For UK Rave Culture (1986)​

HERITAGE: Seminal Dance Crew Foot Patrol Help Lay The Black British Foundations For UK Rave Culture (1986)​


June 12, 2020

Bafflingly, there are still some wilfully ignorant naysayers who refute the Black roots of house music and rave culture. It's a flawed debate that still takes up far too much space online, but fortunately it's one that's easy to shut down.

Here's the hugely influential but criminally under-appreciated dance crew Foot Patrol give a crowd of ravers an early lesson in shuffling while DJ Mike Shaft blows the roof off a rave in Moss Side, Manchester with classics like Adonis' "No Way Back". Applying a jazz fusion style of dancing to house music, the crew created an early example of shuffling.

While many credit the Hacienda with rave's explosion in the North, Manchester had been a hotbed long before, particularly in Moss Side and Hulme. Soundsystems up North were bridging the gap between clashes and raves for years, blasting everything from bashment and dancehall to funk, jazz and early house music, whatever it took to get the people dancing.



Photography: Ian Tilton


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