Who’s listening to the 3000 records in Faisal Hussain’s cupboard?

‘It gave us something different to look at instead of the colonial murder of museums, or stolen artefacts’

Dear Patchers — Welcome to your midweek briefing.

In today’s story, freelance writer Ophira Gottlieb pays a visit to a seemingly reluctant archivist of more than 3,000 South Asian records, all rescued from a historic shop in Balsall Heath. But, she asks, why are they being relegated to museum walls and a cupboard, rather than played for the community?

Elsewhere, eagle-eyed Villa fans amongst us, might have noticed that a member of the Hollywood A-List was in Birmingham on Monday night. Forrest Gump star Tom Hanks — a big fan of the claret and blue — was in town to see his team draw with Liverpool. It’s been a big month for famous faces in the West Mids. Last week, Jack Black was spotted at Asha’s, presumably there on the recommendation of Tom Cruise? Birmingham restaurants ought to be at the top of the list of celeb conversation topics, that’s for sure.

Unfortunately, Birmingham isn’t only attracting the rich and famous. There’s another group busy making our city their home — rats. As such, today’s briefing focuses on rodent hotspots. We also have updates on the school strikes, independent political candidates for the next election, and fears about regeneration plans in the south of the city.

Speak soon. Dan.

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Brum in brief

👨‍🏫School strike: A few weeks ago we reported how Brum school staff have voted to strike. Yesterday that came to fruition as support staff walked out of 35 schools over equal pay claims. 1,500 teaching assistants and catering staff downed tools after members of GMB union voted in favour of industrial action, accusing Birmingham City Council of delaying on equal pay claims made by low paid women workers. Speaking to BBC Midlands Today, GMB organiser Alice Reynolds said: “Women in schools and many areas across the council have not been valued properly.” Full story.

🗳️LGBT+protestor announces candidacy: We can confirm that Shakeel Afsar intends to stand in Hall Green at the next election. Tagging West Midlands mayoral candidate Akhmed Yakoob and Nigel Farage in the video announcing his candidacy, Afsar said elected representatives misrepresent people in the corridors of power. This isn’t Afsar’s first go-round in the limelight. He has previously made headlines for campaigning to stop a school teaching on LGBT+ equality issues and for storming a screening of a Bollywood film about the Islamic State. 

🐀Rat in mi area: With council cuts taking hold, there are fears the city could see a rat infestation due to fewer pest control measures. But an Freedom of Information request by BirminghamLive — on how many complaints about these rodents were made to the council — shows that many residents are already having to deal with these creatures. Top of the worst affected areas are Glebe Farm and Tile Cross, followed by Sparkbrook and Balsall Heath East, Aston, Soho & Jewellery Quarter, and Bartley Green. Areas least affected include Castle Vale, Northfield, and Sutton Four Oaks. Tory Councillor Matt Bennet has already blasted the Council over the cuts saying it will worsen the problem. “This will be a golden decade for two categories of people as far as I can see — rats and gangsters." he said.

🏗️Druids Heath fears: With regeneration on the cards for the Druids Heath estate, residents fear being priced out of the community they have lived in for decades. Regeneration plans, which include knocking down 1,800 homes to build 3,000 new ones, have been in the pipeline for decades. Peni Whelan, who runs a community radio station, told the BBC that the council’s plans amount to a ‘demolition not a regeneration’. She said: “It's the destruction of an entire community. People here love their houses, families live here and there is a sense of community that has been built since the 1960s.” Full story.

⛺Pro-Palestine encampment told to go: The University of Birmingham has been the first British University to threaten pro-Palestine encampment protestors with legal action. Students at the camp were handed the letter by the university’s head of legal services. However protestors told The Dispatch that they would stay “as long as is necessary”. You can read our reporting here — including details on who supports the camp and what the vice chancellor is telling staff. 

🕺Brum dance music history: One of Birmingham’s best-loved dance music brands will hit the floors of Hockley Social Club a mere stones throw from where the Miss Moneypenney’s club was based from 1993 to 2006. Love Unlimited will give punters a chance to hear soul, house and dance classics, led by the original DJ at Miss Moneypenny’s. Tickets here.

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Who’s listening to the 3000 records in Faisal Hussain’s cupboard?

By Ophira Gottlieb

It’s the hottest day of the year so far and I’m sweating it out in Digbeth. To my soft-boiled brain, navigating the Custard Factory and its surrounding dilapidated-cum-gentrified warehouses feels a bit like being in an open-air escape room where all the clues are bad graffiti tags and litter. It’s like the apocalypse has been and gone and wasn’t so bad, and now I’m playing a VR computer game that imagines what cities such as Birmingham might have been like, theoretically, in the before-times. So when I finally reach the offices where Faisal Hussain stashes his 3000-strong collection of records, all I want to do for a moment is sit there and let him talk which, thankfully, he does. 

Hussain is a Birmingham based artist and a somewhat reluctant vinyl archivist, and he’s currently going through the laborious process of photographing thousands of South Asian record sleeves and putting them all online. I’m here to speak with him about how we can best archive a collection that might otherwise be lost to the passage of time. Hussain’s work raises an important question of what the act of archiving actually does to the objects being archived — does it celebrate and commemorate the artefacts, or does it turn them into relics of the past? 

But back to sunny Digbeth. “It’s cool to be into vinyl now,” Hussain informs me matter-of-factly. “It’s all very Shoreditch.” We’re in a small white room off of Fazeley Street, and there are records on the walls and in boxes and on the tables. In the corner are a couple of turntables, and a plastic fold-out chair supporting a speaker. It’s all very cool, very Shoreditch. 

Faisal Hussain selecting records. Photo by: Ophira Gottlieb/The Dispatch.

What isn’t necessarily cool, however, are the particular records that Hussain keeps in his collection. The wall-mounted sleeves boast the garish, dated covers of Bollywood soundtracks and their Pakistani ‘Lollywood’ counterparts, and in the boxes are record after record of electro ragga, Hindi Abba covers, and Bhangra. “Some of it, to be honest, is bloody awful,” Hussain admits. He enjoys the odd bit of Bhangra, but only at weddings, which begs the obvious question of: why does he have so much of it?