Ska Face

Davey’s raving career started on the London squat party scene in the mid-90s, following sound systems like Spiral Tribe, Bedlam, Vox Pop, the Fear Teachers, Chiba City, Virus and Jiba. At the same time, he was heavily into the jungle raves and associated pirate radio stations in London, which continually blurred the lines between Jamaican, electronic and hiphop music. From 1997-99 Davey played a ska/reggae residency at the legendary south London punk boozer, the Goldsmiths Tavern, alongside bands like P.A.I.N., Inner Terrestials and veteran Jamaican rocksteady DJ Lenny. As one of the mainstays of the notorious Hekate sound system (since 1996), Ravey Davey’s morning sets at London squat parties became established as the signal for the party to lose its frown – he would mix up ska, disco, punk and gabba without much regard for convention or for the serious ravers who still wanted to zone out to 4-4 techno. Barely able to stay still for a minute, Davey lived between the UK, France and Eire at the same time as touring with Hekate sound system as they were chased by Interpol from one European country to another. When the Hekate sound system collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions, Davey awoke suddenly in 2007 in Uganda. Finding nowhere that would let him play his tunes, he opened his own music venue in Bunga, on the outskirts of Kampala: the notorious Tilapia Cultural Centre. Here he worked with a variety of local bands, MCs and DJs, providing a space for artists to rehearse freely and a platform to air their products. However, the cultural centre proved too provocative for the forces of conservatism in Uganda and the authorities soon caught up with ‘David Tilapia’. After his inevitable deportation from the Pearl of Africa, Davey fooled a young promoter into letting him play at the Rift Valley Festival in neighbouring Kenya. The one condition was that he had to change his stage-name from ‘Tilapia’, on the grounds that the sophisticated Kenyan audiences would