Skunk Ansansie about childhood: “I had to grow up very quickly”

Poet John Betjeman describes childhood, measures in sounds, smells and moments, “before the dark hour of reason breaks”. For Deborah Anne Dyer alias Skin started this hour early. A different fate floats for her daughter.

You got a daughter at 54. What is going through your head when you look at it today?

Skin: She is actually the only thing that prevents me from being crazy. From a politically speaking, we are in a bad situation. The Trump administration has shifted the balance of the world in terms of democracy. And what happens in America has an echo all over the world. Countries that are already leaning into an authoritarian direction are now also encouraged. I have never experienced anything like this in my life, so I have to think back longer. When Trump was re -elected, my daughter asked me: “Why is mom so sad?” At that moment I knew that to survive for the next few years, I have to temporarily separate my adult from my joyful spiritual self. For the sake of my daughter. I have to hide the negative. And at the same time, do not forget that as a dark -skinned child of two lesbian women, they will be exactly what these people want to attack.

How can you imagine your childhood?

I had to grow up very quickly. I have three older brothers, my mother was a single parent, and our family was accordingly poor. My father was always absent. He worked on an oil drilling platform, or for the Royal Air Force or for the post. He was rarely at home because he didn’t feel like taking care of us children. I still get on well with my father because I know that, like me, he comes from a Jamaican-born family. Jamaican families often raise their children in a violent atmosphere, which Blacks like to jokes about. According to the motto: “My mother wanted to beat me up, and because she couldn’t find the belt, she took the frying pan.” Sometimes you were even annoyed with a plush tok if nothing else was tangible. This is an experience that all blacks have in common, and in my opinion this violence goes back to the slave champions, whose behavior the blacks have psychologically internalized over time. Strangely enough, a special kind of humor jumps out.

What do you mean by that?

Jamaicans are very humorous. However, it is also a survival strategy to make a joke out of everything, no matter how serious it is. In addition, Jamaicans like to have fun. For example, if someone dies, a huge party will be held nine days after, where everyone freaks out and eats a bunch of food. This is called Nine-Night or The Ninth. Jamaicans love life, but that can be said about many communities who are used to suffering. The Jewish community, for example. Jews are known for their humor because they know: if they don’t laugh, they would cry.

Did you feel loved as a child?

There was not much love in my mother’s family, so it was more about survival and the idea that children can only be educated through fear. As a child, I was always afraid of beating, just like my mother and her mother. But unlike them, I have now broken this chain. It may be more difficult to do without the discipline of his children, but I prefer to do so than to resolve my daughter. Sad, but true: I think my mother hugged me for the first time when she came to one of our concerts. For me it was a completely new feeling. To this day, I am latently repellent to strangers, only with my wife and daughter it looks completely different. They get the whole dedication that I have never experienced myself. But I only understood that afterwards. In a way, you always stay the little child who has not been loved properly. I will change that for my daughter.

Did you realize at the time why you were beaten?

No, never. I just suspected that I had to have done something that my mother didn’t like. In addition, it was completely natural to be able to be beaten by uncles and aunts if we did something that didn’t like them. My mother worked as a night nurse, and whenever she came home, she shouted at us, we should either be quiet or go outside. And then we did that all day. She never had an idea where we drove ourselves around, and she would probably have been horrified if she knew it.

But that also sounds wild and exciting. An unattended life.

Yes, it was a lot of fun for me, especially during the summer vacation, where you could make nonsense unattended. In comparison, the home was a scary place, but to which I had to return from time to time because there was something to eat and my bed stood there. That was actually the only two reasons. Because we as children did not have our own house key, there was only breakfast and dinner at home, never anything about lunch. But we didn’t need much back then.

Do you think these experiences have shaped your artistic career?

Absolutely. Between 14 and 24 I was very rebellious. I drove a lot around clubs and partyed all the time. I had the feeling that I left my past behind me and only did what I wanted. I shave my skull, I put on my Doc Martens, I sing in a band, I get born every night. That was my personal revolt, the opposite of the good Christian girl with the ordinary dresses. But now I notice that this inner child was never gone. The rock star was the facade, not the other way around.

Do you still feel depressed today?

So if it is not about Trump? No. It took a long time to get where I am now. I have wife and child and a nice house, but I will be 58 this year. This luck is all the more valuable to me.

Interview and text: Markus Hockenbrink