From Jazz Clubs to Prison Yards: The Echoes of Heartache Across Generations
- David Anglin
- Jun 3
- 2 min read
Updated: Jun 26
An immersive music heavy exhibition
At our festive live show in Waltham Forest, two young jazz artists delivered more than music—they told stories. Their haunting cover of Good Morning Heartache sparked a reflection on pain, resilience, and the unbroken rhythm between past and present.
Back in December, during our end-of-year celebration, we had the pleasure of hosting two remarkable women—Zamar and LizMNK—who performed live jazz from the elegant setting of Exceline Restaurant. But this was more than a setlist. They served up a jazz history lesson, steeped in rhythm and reverence.
As a self-professed music lover, I thought I had jazz figured out. But Zamar and Liz broke it down—its roots, its traditions, its struggles—with such clarity and soul that I found myself thinking, Guess the young can teach the old.
Revisiting that performance, one moment lingers: the simplicity of Zamar’s double bass, understated yet magnetic, giving LizMNK’s voice space to float. One lyric stopped me in my tracks:
Stop haunting me now
Can't shake you no how
Just leave me alone
I've got those Monday blues / Straight through Sunday blues
Good morning heartache, here we go again
They told me it was a cover—originally sung by Belle Baker, a Jewish-American performer who came from crushing poverty. Forced into factory work by age six, denied schooling, her music became a vessel for survival. It was Ella Fitzgerald’s version, though, that struck a chord with the duo—and with me. I’m listening as I write this. Ella’s delivery is pitch-perfect, every note like a memory of a lost lover. Haunting.
Delving into Ella’s backstory, I found echoes we still hear today: childhood trauma, a mother lost at 15, whispers of abuse, her descent into truancy and crime, eventually confined to a reformatory school. Those institutions? Often closer to prisons. And still, she sang. Still, she rose.
Fast forward nearly a century, and the script hasn’t changed—only the actors.
In preparing for our upcoming exhibition, Red Light Busking presents Kanda Vol.1 – Bedroom Shut, Music Up, I spoke to a woman who entered the UK prison system in the early 2000s. Her story bore the same beats: foster care, institutional neglect, incarceration at 16. One detail she shared stuck with me—the sight of other young girls, visibly pregnant, pacing the prison floors. For some, “Monday blues” aren't metaphor. They’re lived.
Our exhibition is about these patterns—how they manifest in places like Waltham Forest, how they’ve shaped music that’s too often misunderstood or criminalised. Music that’s raw, real, and resilient. The soundtrack of a generation.
When I say this exhibition is powerful, I mean it. It’s not just art. It’s catharsis. If you haven’t RSVP’d yet, do it.
And as a small gift, I’ll leave you with Zamar and LizMNK’s rendition of Good Morning Heartache up above and Ella Fitzgerald’s version down below.
Listen—really listen. Let the lyrics sit with you. And ask yourself the question at the heart of our work:
Why?
Peace and blessings,
David
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