In this week's newsletter:
- I spoke to Jeremy Corbyn about grassroots music as the Peace & Justice Project announces a brand new festival
- There's good news about the progress of the grassroots levy
- Fancy some apocalyptic industrial music for Track Of The Week?
"It will bring people together," former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the Labour Party tells me. We're in the green room of the Shacklewell Arms in Dalston, east London, which isn't so much green as it is a canvas of graffiti and signatures left by bands who once left their belongings between these walls. "There's going to be a sense of occasion and a real spirit about it."
That platform is Bulletproof Festival, which is taking place in East London from 4th-6th June 2026. It was announced, coinciding with a speech from Corbyn himself, on Monday night during a Grassroots For Gaza fundraiser. It's intended as the antidote to mass-market events with ties to corporations attempting to artwash themselves while also rubbing shoulders with businesses actively damaging the world. It's also fighting back against what might be described as music's overarching enemy - corporate greed.
The threats to the grassroots sector are numerous, but all roads lead to the greed of profiteers who will never be satisfied with their already gargantuan numbers. The greed of wealthy developers drives them to build luxury flats next to venues and drive them to shut their doors. Artists make a pittance from streaming so it doesn't affect wealthy DSPs' bottom line. The interests of profit-guzzling corporations have meant gig tickets have soared in price, shutting customers out, and the answer to ticket touting is seemingly to meet them at their level by using so-called 'dynamic' or surge pricing. Awareness of this has catalysed a wave of boycotts - first SXSW, over their ties to the military, then the Bands Boycott Barclays movement (affecting The Great Escape, Download and Latitude last year), then Superstruct/KKR, then Spotify.
For all of these reasons, music has become a political battleground. Within that, it's also - as it always has been - a powerful site for activism. The Peace & Justice Project, founded by Corbyn, knows this well. The organisation has put on numerous gigs under the Music For The Many banner to call awareness to the plight of grassroots venues and to raise money for humanitarian organisations in Gaza. Now, it's going even bigger, creating a huge grassroots platform for artists to find an audience and speak truth to power, unadulterated by the interests of big business.
Corbyn has been a rare parliamentary advocate for grassroots venues. There have, of course, been hearings on their plight in Westminster and, currently, a fan-led consultation, but the Government has nonetheless been too slow to save the 15 per cent of UK GMVs which have closed in the past two years. The bitter taste left by the government's neglect of the grassroots sector in the pandemic still lingers, where then-chancellor Rishi Sunak infamously encouraged creatives to "adapt" (or retrain in cyber, perhaps?) instead of prudently providing them with the proper support.
As Corbyn speaks about why the cause matters to him, it begins to crystallise how much sense it makes that he is one of politics' foremost champions for the grassroots sector. Just as music is increasingly inextricable from politics, it is also inextricable from so many other things he has so passionately advocated for. Access to grassroots music venues is a class issue, both in the sense of providing more affordable gigs, but also in providing opportunity for those trying to make a living out of music. (Further to this, in his earlier speech, Corbyn spoke up for the need for young musicians to make a fair wage). As Labour leader, he also included pledges in his manifestos to lower the barriers of access to the arts for children, wanting to ensure every child had the opportunity to learn an instrument and visit galleries and theatres. "Art, theatre, music should not be the preserve of the middle classes. It's got to be for everybody, and that's what we're trying to do."
"For a long time, music was the preserve of the wealthy and upper classes," he says, nodding to his own love of classical music. "You just wonder how many great composers were lost to us in the 17th, 18th and 19th century, because they didn't have any money, couldn't read or write and just remembered everything, and it was only the rich that could create written sheet music and written music. I feel very passionately that there is creative endeavor in everybody, and music is the expression of that. You think of all of the great bands that we all know and love, - the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, they have nearly always been working class kids playing in garages on estates, in community centers and managing to get somewhere together and become a band, in some cases very, very successful. Those opportunities for rehearsal, playing together disappearing all the time, and community centers are not always available. Live music clubs are becoming a rarity rather than a norm."
Corbyn has lived in Islington for 45 years. He remembers a time where Holloway Road was abuzz with pubs and it was possible to drift from one to the other, watching band after band after band. "Now you don't get any of that. You've got gastro pubs serving expensive food and playing recorded music and very little else. The number of live music venues is probably greater in my part of London than the average in most places, but there aren't very many of them, and the number that are opening is very, very few indeed in our borough."
On top of all this, the Peace and Justice Project has been unequivocal in its support for the grassroots levy, lobbying for one since its creation. "We believe that the most logical way is for the wealthy corporate sponsors of large arena and stadiums should cover this cost," Corbyn says. "It is, after all, our grassroots music venues that give the artists who hope to go on and play 10-20,000 or more capacity shows the chance to develop a following and nurture their creativity before moving on to these massive venues. We, of course, support voluntary options for artists and fans buying tickets but ultimately those with the broadest shoulders should pay their fair share."
Bulletproof Festival takes place in East London from 4th - 6th June 2026.
Track Of The Week
'Ordinary Loss' by HEALTH
Music that confronts the permacrisis tends to go in one of two directions - it searches for the light or stares straight into the abyss to offer a means of relatability to anyone doing the same. HEALTH is doing the latter. At the same time, their dungeon rave-ready vision of apocalypse is epic in scope, jolting and pulsing with dread before the thick walls of guitars and synths crumble to expose the real, fragile scope of the fear vocalist Jake Duzsik sings about: "I'm still afraid to die." It's also a thrilling taste of their forthcoming album Conflict DLC, which comes out on 11th December via Loma Vista. (I'm fully ready for it to completely wreck my planned album of the year list and it might just wreck yours too).
Check out and subscribe to our 2025 Favourites playlist on YouTube for more recent tracks of the week.
Community Prompt
Join in with A Peaceful Noise
On the subject of music for wonderful causes, those based in or close to the East of England might want to check out A Peaceful Noise, a charity all-dayer raising money for the Nick Alexander Music Trust. The charity was founded in honour of Nick Alexander, who was killed in the Bataclan terror attack in 2015 while working as Eagles Of Death Metal's merch manager. It's taking place this year across 1o independent venues throughout his hometown of Colchester - in reference to the 10th anniversary of the attack - on Saturday 22nd November, raising money to provide instruments and equipment to disadvantaged community groups across the UK. Nova Twins are headlining, while there'll also be performances from Pet Needs, Bridget, Oxygen Thief, Shed, Deux Furieuses and many more.
Hopeful Story Of The Week
Good news on the Grassroots Levy
We're getting closer to seeing the grassroots levy becoming the norm, according to the Music Venue Trust. The 0rganisation confirmed yesterday that 1.1 million tickets on sale for 2026 include the levy, amounting to 27.6% of "big gig tickets". Although there is still work to do - after all, 2.9 million tickets don't carry the levy at present - it's a huge jump from where we started.