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Where I grew up, "chav" (or more precisely, "chava") was just another word for man, or guy, used more or less interchangeably with the less well-known "gadgie". So imagine my surprise when the term chav started to creep into the lexicon of the mainstream media: only now it is being used in an altogether less neutral way, to simultaneously denote and denigrate a specific social group.

So what does this mean for our old use of the word "chava" in my native Berwick-upon-Tweed tongue? Can you even still use it in that more general sense of "guy" to refer to, for example, "that chava there"? And is that only because most of the guys from Berwick would also fall into the rest of the country's understanding of what it means to be a chav?

Julie Burchill put it best in her sadly-not-on-YouTube-yet Sky One documentary Chavs, which highlighted the element of social sneering inherent in this recent media appropriation; but to the rap sheet I might be tempted to add a plea to give the good people of Berwick their word back. Only it turns out that it was never actually our word in the first place: "chava" is just one of the many loan words from the Romani language which have been absorbed into our local dialect (this one derived from "chavi", meaning "kid" in the source language).

It seems then that it is down to the UK's Gypsy and Traveller communities to reclaim the term chav, and this is precisely the goal of the new exhibition at the Novas Contemporary Urban Centre - London Bridge Bankside. Running from September 6th through to October 13th, Chavi is a collaboration between three artists from those communities, Damian and Delaine Le Bas and Daniel Baker, who by confronting and subverting stereotypes aim to both re-evaluate and reclaim the representation of the Gypsy within society.

"Chavi, the Romany word for kid, has been recently appropriated as a derogatory label for working class youth style," the website of the Novas Group charity helpfully explains. "Although the look signalled by this label has its origins in a Gypsy aesthetic, these references are usually forgotten, reflecting society’s ongoing denial or ignorance of the Gypsy’s creative influence on wider society."

Chavi exhibition information
Novas Group website
Chav definition on Wikipedia
Berwick-upon-Tweed entry on Wikipedia

gemma sheppard, 4th Sep 2007 16:59:32
 

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