Dexter Goldson: 'We turned homophobic murder music on its head'

New documentary ‘Out & Bad’ celebrates the black gay clubbing scene. Dexter Goldson recalls how he and his friends overcame prejudice on the dancefloor

Dexter Goldson

Next time, we’ll meet up and I’ll show you the moves. You got the puppy tail and the star bwoy and dutty wine, calm step, feeflow and cyber space. I am 50 now but I still go out every Friday and Saturday night and we dance at Bootylicious in Brixton, that’s the best place to go now. It’s a monthly LGBT club night for dancehall, bashment and R&B music. I never miss a night.

There are lots of young men on the scene now and it is very different from when I came here from Jamaica in December 1999. Because I’m gay I wasn’t welcome in Jamaica and I would have had to live a lie if I stayed, I would have had to get a girlfriend.

I couldn’t be myself. So when I came to London it was really nice because everybody enjoyed themselves and had a good time, everybody was together. Every weekend we’d be going to Tottenham Court Road, or Leicester Square, we went to Velodrome or Caribana Club. I was really enjoying the parties and felt I could be who I wanted to be.

I started having birthday parties where maybe 500 people would come and I was a part of the Angel Crew, we were probably the most well-known clique back then on the black LGBT music scene and we set up some of the underground parties, it was all word of mouth and all these people would come from all over London and different DJs would come from all over Europe to play there. It felt very free but also it felt like a piece of home.

There were so many people from the West Indies and especially Jamaica who were all coming together, everybody on the black gay scene was there, half the people that would turn up at my house I didn’t even know but we were all dancing to dancehall music. We had parties every weekend, Friday to Sunday, breakfast parties, people would wake up and start all over again. Then after a while we started getting bigger venues and everyone went all-out it was very flamboyant. Everyone felt like they belonged. I miss those years.

Yes, with dancehall music the lyrics is sometimes anti-gay, because the music comes from Jamaica, where homosexuality between men is still illegal. There were certainly gay-bashing elements to Nineties and early Noughties dancehall music by the likes of Bounty Killer and Elephant Man.

Some of the songs talk about killing and burning gay men, they call it “murder music”, but you don’t listen to the lyrics you just feel the beat. We turned all the homophobic stuff on its head and made it our own thing. We loved dancehall even if it didn’t love us.

Everyone calls me Auntie now, because all the boys say “auntie” and “sister” to each other and I am like the granddaddy of the group really. The friends I made at the dancehall clubs and parties 15 years ago are still my friends now. We are more than friends, we are family. Put it like this: they are my only family in England.

All these young guys on the scene today, they remind me of when I was young. Some of them have Jamaican roots and there are 16 and 17-year-olds who will visit my house and we talk about the gay scene and attitudes to that in Jamaica and if they’re feeling guilty about the gay thing I say to them don’t worry about it. England is great, it’s very accepting.

They also think if their mothers find out there will be a big problem but I tell them it will be OK. It’s all changed now because it’s all about drug parties now, it’s a different thing for these young guys.

In Jamaica there is nothing for me now. There would be smaller underground parties in Jamaica but they were kind of hidden and people might come with cut glass and that. I might go back to visit Jamaica, it’s never too late, but not to live, no way. I would not last long there. When we go dancehall now, everybody looks at everybody else, but it is not judgemental, we just like to see each other dance, have fun and no one is different, we are all in it together, that’s how we do.

Dexter Goldson is one of the subjects of ‘Out & Bad’, a new documentary on the UK’s LGBT bashment and dancehall scene, now available to stream on Noisey, VICE’s online music channel (noisey.vice.com)