George Ward
Freelance journalist and online editor for CLUNK. Can be found out and about in Bristol, finding cheap records or having a pint on King Street.
We chat to playwright James Meteyard, MC Jammz and musician Shemzy on their project Blaze FM, a play exploring grime and pirate radio
‘Blaze FM’ is the new production from The Big House, co-written by playwright James Meteyard and grime MC Jammz and directed by Maggie Norris. After The Big House made their Edinburgh Fringe debut with Blaze FM, the show is now hitting the road in its first ever tour,, with dates in Bristol later this month (29 September – 3rd October) and Coventry in October (7-8 October). Tickets are available HERE.
This piece of political theatre, set in a council flat in Hackney, tells the story of a pirate radio station broadcasting “the realest music from the next generation” and laying the foundation for grime music in the UK. Exploring this genre, as well as drill and jungle, ‘Blaze FM’ is deeply interested in the country’s various subcultures, in particular how music unites and build communities, but also how state overreach and the censorship of Black culture creates a struggle to keep them alive.
The Big House, the production company behind ‘Blaze FM’ was founded by Maggie Norris in 2013 after a long career of working with ex-offenders. Since then, the company has consistently worked with and supported young people leaving care, supporting them to enter education, employment and training through theatre, film, music, and animation.
We chatted to writers James Meteyard + Jammz and Music Supervisor/Musical Director Shemzy about the writing of ‘Blaze FM’ and why it is such an important story to tell in 2026.
Could you tell us a little more about the collaborative process of writing Blaze FM?
Shemzy: James and Jammz wrote the play. At the very least I contributed to editing song lyrics to suit individual cast members and I also made some alteration towards the musical compositions to fit the scenes.
James: Jammz and I spoke about the idea of a music show, looking at a progression from garage into grime into drill. The music was born on pirate radio, which is how Jammz came up through the music scene and felt like a rich setting for the play. We had some exploratory discussions with Maggie Norris (director), and then across a few months we did a lot of research, watched a lot of old clips, went to exhibitions, and started to form the outline of a story and some characters together. The Open House Project was for 15 young people, so it was a huge cast.
At the time of writing, it had been about six years since Skengdo x AM had their song ‘Attempted’ banned, and that was still madness to us. Drill music is perceived as violent, but we were interested in looking at what had happened politically in the country over the last fifteen years.
We wrote scenes independently, sent them to each other, gave notes and made tweaks, and then put placeholders for Jammz to put songs into, before we collated it into a master copy. The show then evolved the following year into a new show called ‘Between the Lines‘ which only had eight characters, and then evolved again later into a new show which became ‘Blaze FM‘ which only has five.
We realised quite quickly that the first version had too many political issues in it, each could be a whole play in and of themselves, and thematically there was too much for an audience to grasp. Although the initial intention was for the audience to feel that cascading, overwhelming effect of all the different political things happening, in reality, it’s more effective to give an audience something to hook into and follow in an extended way.
Jammz: The original brief was to write a play tracking the journey of Black music in the UK since the early 90s. James and I went away and researched that history: how things developed, and what themes kept coming up. But early on we both agreed we didn’t want the music to be the centre of the story. So we dug deeper into the stories the music was telling.
What were the common threads? What pressures shaped how the music developed? That’s where the idea of the pirate station came from, a hub that’s ever-present through everything. From there we could build stories rooted in reality, around real people and real experiences, stories people are still living today. For both of us, authenticity to people’s lived experience was the big thing.
Music obviously plays a huge role in the production – were there any artists in particular who were important influences on the show?
Shemzy: I’m sure Jammz and James have their influences, as for myself there’s Asher D, Kano, Ms. Dynamite, Lisa Maffia, Tinchy Stryder, K Trap, Mc Bushkin, Devlin, DJ Slimzee and Peter Tosh.
James: Lord of the Mics, Risky Roads, old Boiler Rooms, and really anything coming out of Jammer’s Basement was a big inspiration. That’s where a lot of grime started with now household names such as Wiley and Kano. I grew up listening to grime and pirate radio but I wasn’t immersed in it in the same way that Jammz was. He’s an artist who grew up playing on pirate radio stations. So much of the authenticity of the play is drawn from Jammz’s lived experience.
We looked at a lot of real life pirate radio stories. Like Slimmzy getting the first ASBO for setting at the antenna for Rinse FM (one of the biggest pirate radio stations) which meant he was banned from going onto any rooftops in Tower Hamlets. It’s crazy to me that this was a thing that was invented to punish people for putting up aerials.
Pirate radio ultimately is so inspiring. They weren’t just putting speakers on the street, they created a whole technical setup to broadcast music across the capital. It’s an extraordinary feat of entrepreneurship, determination and technical knowledge. And it was dangerous – people often had to climb lift shafts and walk across edges of high-rise rooftops to set up aerials.
Jammz: Honestly, the list could go on forever. From MC Det, Brockie and Shabba D to Wiley, Kano, Lady Fury and Kele Le Roc, and more. More recently, Skengdo & AM and K Trap were big influences on the drill side for me. In terms of Reggae, Supercat, Freddie Mcgreggor – The list is endless if I’m being honest.
Why was now the right time to tell this story?
James: I mean, pirate radio is a form of rebel culture – ‘You won’t let us be heard on the mainstream, so we will make our own channel to distribute our music’. This is before the times of Spotify, or social media, or even the internet as we know it today – so to distribute your music you either have to go out on the street and physically sell your CDs or get on the radio via a record label.
There was very little of the BBC Introducing style platforms platforming new artists, and if there was, it was catered for a more mainstream, predominantly white audience, which is then controlled by a form of soft censorship. It’s an ongoing question that exists heavily today: Who has the right to speak within our society? Which voices are allowed to be listened to? Who makes those decisions?
Whilst there’s a nostalgic element to the play, there’s also a broader point which speaks to nanny state risks, with an increase in social media policing to facial recognition technology to people being arrested for what they say online. We live in a society that prides itself on valuing freedom of speech, but there’s an argument that the freedom rests on whether or not someone agrees with what you’re saying.
The banning of Black music is something both historical and something that is present and still happening today. Drill music for instance, is commodified and commercialised whilst being demonised and banned. Drill lyrics being used as evidence in court cases through joint enterprise to get somebody who’s been in a music video arrested, or somebody who’s made a song that might be an expression of their anger and a complete fiction is suddenly treated as confessional evidence to suggest intent of committing a crime.
Also, the demographic that The Big House serves is one composed of voices that historically aren’t listened to. But there’s a natural marrying between the politicised nature of the young people that we work with and the vibrancy of the community we serve. The story is channeled through the music that they listen to and make themselves as artists.
Jammz: I don’t think there’ll ever be a wrong time to tell this story, as long as oppression exists. At its core, it’s about the right to be heard, and who gets given that. That’s extremely relevant today, and it probably always will be.
You’re bringing the show to Bristol this month, a city with a rich musical and cultural history – how are you embracing this?
James: Bristol is the perfect home for it, with both a long history of pirate radio and a long and rich history of sound system culture, established by a large Jamaican community. I’m super excited to see how a Bristol audience responds to ‘Blaze‘. We were very aware that we’re a company coming from London with a story set in London, and so we wanted to do a lot to try and tap into the subcultures in Bristol that are engaging and digesting this music.
For example, we’ve worked with a local Bristolian artist to develop a post-show musical lineup, so we’ll be platforming one Bristol-based artist every night, and they’ll perform their music at the end of the show after curtain call. We’re also doing a lot of work with Bristol community groups, to make sure that care-affected young people in Bristol can access free tickets to see ‘Blaze FM.‘ There’s also a post-show panel on the themes of the show on the 1st of October with Roger Griffith MBE and Lambros Fatsis (Policing the Beats) to give space to further talks about the issues in the show within both a Bristol and national context.
Jammz: As an MC I’ve spent a lot of time in Bristol. I’ve performed at loads of shows there and worked with a lot of artists from the city. It’s a place I’m really fond of, and its musical history made it a natural home for the play, so I’m really happy to be bringing it there. We didn’t want to just turn up, do the show and leave, so we’re running response pieces alongside the run. The idea is to create space for people to tell their own stories about what they’ve experienced there, and to celebrate that history more. Stories need to be heard.
Catch ‘Blaze FM’ at the following:
Old Vic, Bristol – 29th September – 3rd October
Belgrade Theatre, Coventry – 7th – 8th October