Alcohol, Jazz & Prohibition — How Speakeasies & Shebeens in the 1920s & 1940s Fuelled The Rise Of Independent Music In The US & UK
by Meryana Tamera
I have a big confession to make: I adore the idea of the Speakeasy — those illegal nightclubs that sprung up during America’s Prohibition era (1920–1933), and if I had lived during that time, I would have happily run one, and would have been the Mistress of the Music, as content as anything. But that’s all in dreamland.
In reality, I would probably have been forced to become a Gangster’s Moll to keep the said-Gangster and his mob from taking over my Speakeasy, and slitting my throat for not paying up!!
Hardcore. Dream over! Right?
The Americans are so cool with their ideas, their creativity and their energy, but it wasn’t only the Americans who were at it. The Brits borrowed the idea of Speakeasies from their friends across the water in the 1920s too, even though there was no Prohibition in Britain, and Speakeasies became hugely popular in London and around the country during that time.
In later decades, in the UK, these illegal drinking clubs became known as Shebeens. Fast forward through the decades, I would go to them in Notting Hill which was then a popular Jamaican enclave in West London. It was the…
