From Balaclavas to Ballyhackamore: Scott's Jazz Club, Belfast, Northern Ireland

Standing under a slate gray sky on East Belfast's Lower Newtownards Road, Sam Charter's pessimistic proclamation that it was “difficult to think of Belfast as a city of singing and music” may be understandable.1 On either side of the road are two of the enormous murals on gable walls that are so characteristic of the city. These particular murals are monochrome paintings of heavily armed men in fatigues and black balaclavas. Alongside the intricate insignia of paramilitary organizations is the well-established political vocabulary of these kinds of artworks: rights, attack, defense, freedom. They act like sentries to this eastern part of the capital, traditionally Protestant and linked inextricably to the working-class streets and heavy industry of the shipyards on which much of Belfast's wealth was built.