Summer 2024 is here - top exhibitions, nooks and crannies, and lots more. First up...
Beyond the Bassline
Music lovers get ready to go on an inspiring, wondrous journey through the centuries - to the heart of Black British Music. The British Library has curated a comprehensive exhibition documenting and showcasing the impact and importance of 500 years of Black music on British culture.
Most contemporary musical genres have their roots in Black music. But our colonial, white supremacist system has conspired to erase Black history and influence, which is why it’s taken a long time to acknowledge and celebrate it.
It began in Africa - long, long ago - to the beat of the drum, the instrument that is central to African music and cultural tradition, and continues to be its heartbeat. Shaped by centuries of forced migration across the Atlantic, indigenous African sounds have travelled and permeated a vast array of musical genres, gradually becoming an intrinsic, indelible part of British culture.
Black musicians landed on our shores. Take, for instance, classical composer Ignatius Sancho, the first (known) African composer to publish music in the Western classical style, in the 18th century. As well as a successful businessman and outspoken abolitionist, he was the first Black person to vote in parliamentary elections – in 1774 and 1780. By the time musicians like Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Amanda Aldridge – AKA Montague Ring - and Rudolph Dunbar came on the classical scene, late 19th / early 20th centuries, Black musicians and composers were able to record their music and share it with a much wider audience – a phenomena, that would keep on growing.
Show time
With the advent of jazz, likely the first genre associated with Black music in the ‘West’, things were set to change - significantly. Soho, with its dazzling night scene, soon became the epicentre of this new wave of social and cultural innovation – the place people mixed, regardless of their race, gender, or sexuality. London Feminista’s blog about Soho introduced the illustrious Shim Sham Club - but there were plenty more, including the Florence Mills Social Parlour opened in 1936 by Pan-African activist Amy Ashwood Garvey and her partner, song writer and performer Sam Manning. The richness and diversity they injected into London was phenomenal - and with it came new, revolutionary ideas about how different the world could be. Women got to shine too. From Winnifred Atwell and Patti Flynn to Adelaide Hall and Shirley Bassey, their talent took centre stage. They sang, played instruments, and became household names delighting generations of spectators.
This is only part of the story. Britain’s conservative values jarred with Soho’s 'wild side' and the authorities came down hard on clubs. And, of course, there was racism.
Music as political act
With the arrival of the Windrush generation (1948) - although, as the exhibition makes quite clear, it was by no means the inception of Black history in the UK – racism, deeply imbedded in British society, escalated further. Perceived as a threat and framed as such in political, media and public discourse, Black people - and Brown people for that matter - experienced extreme levels of discrimination and hardship, that no amount of talent, inspiration or sheer hard work could stave off - even as they were trying to make London their home.
Centuries of colonial prejudice take a long time to unlearn. We are still only just beginning that journey now – and many White people remain stubbornly unaware, unwilling or even further entrenched in their archaic beliefs about racism.
Music became an important conduit for articulating the growing frustration, but also to create a sense of community and belonging. The clubs that opened between the 1960’s and 70’s became intrinsic to Black youth culture. They played Black music - big international names as well as local bands – bringing people together to share tunes, ideas, and struggles. Amidst constant police harassment, and widespread social and political discontent, a new generation of Black musicians and poets came of age – people like Linton Kwesi Johnson, and later Benjamin Zephaniah, and many more - who became the voice of resistance.
With the clubs came the mighty sound systems - playing Rastafari infused roots reggae, with its spiritual, political message and connection to the global African community – and the more poppy sounding lovers’ rock. The record industry took things up another notch. As Black music became more mainstream, its influence grew. It made a big impact on genres like punk and two-tone – a mix of ska and reggae with punk and new wave – creating a movement where Black and White people aligned politically against racism and state repression – such as in the seminal ‘Rock Against Racism’ – a carnival against fascism.
Calling all junglists
The exhibition continues through to the age of the pirate radio and the internet, demonstrating just how profoundly Black music has transformed the beats we listen and dance to – but beyond that, the essence of our culture and our society. And this circles us back to Black Herstories Music, last year’s blog which features a star-studded (now updated) playlist to accompany you in this astounding musical experience.
Just remember to turn up the bass!
Discover this little corner ...
While you are at the British Library in Kings Cross, take time to explore behind the scenes. The area has undergone momentous redevelopment and gentrification … but you can still find pockets of the old London. Take Somers Town, for instance, a small neighbourhood wedged between the Euston Road and Camdem, one of those relatively rare places, in inner London, where working class people can still afford to live. Its spirit and history are palpable as you walk around. The contrast with the newly developed Granary Square couldn’t be starker. No wonder local people fear for their future.
I came here for two main reasons. First to see where Mary Wollstonecraft had once lived and which is now part of an estate known as Oakshott Court, at the Werrington Street end – look up for the brown plaque. She resided near this spot with her husband William Goodwin between 1784 and 1797. Her daughter, Mary Shelley, was born here. Oakshott Court is the archetypal social housing development, built in Camden in the 1970’s, with its rich community history. You’ll see lots of interesting architecture as you walk around the area.
The second reason, was to check out the People’s Museum Somers Town, A Space For Us, which in addition to recording and preserving local voice and history, offers local guided walks about urban change, social housing, or radical thinkers. When I popped by, they were preparing for the local festival, but I’ll definitely visit again – it’s a fascinating place, brimming with local knowledge and enthusiasm.
I picked up one of their leaflets and found out that George Padmore, the political thinker and Pan-Africanist, lived at 22 Cranleigh House, Cranleigh Street, between 1945 and 1957. He was the main organiser of the fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester in 1945, and played a pivotal role in setting the agenda for decolonisation, including Ghana’s independence. According to feminist activist Selma James, together, with his partner Dorothy Pizer, a British working-class anti-racist, their flat was an important meeting place for anti-colonial activists organising against British imperialism.
P21 Gallery is very near here too, at 21 – 27 Chalton Street, and is an interesting gallery space, which promotes contemporary Arab art and culture – a good place to catch exhibitions about Palestine and Sudan. And then I remembered seeing the film, Somers Town (2008) years ago - the story of an unlikely friendship between two boys and mostly set in the neighbourhood and definitely worth a watch … and my research threw up more films: Ladykillers (1955), Mona Lisa (1986), High Hopes (1988), and Breaking and Entering (2006).
Before you head off, there are a couple more places worth the detour.
Mary Wollstonecraft’s memorial tomb is in St Pancras Gardens – a tranquil space to meander, read or ponder. She was originally buried here but, having expressed the wish to be laid to rest near her parents, she and her husband William were disinterred and moved to Bournemouth.
And finally, no visit to Kings Cross is complete without popping into the legendary, radical bookshop, Housmans. Established in 1945 and based at 5 Cally Road since 1959, its vast collection of books and magazines about politics, anarchism, feminisms, anti-racism, decolonisation is second to none.
Weather permitting – head to Regent’s canal for a stroll to Camden and beyond or if you fancy – throughout summer, Screen on the Canal, has a full programme for all tastes.
Yoko Ono: music to my ears
There is no two ways about it. Yoko Ono (1933) is marmite. I hate marmite – but I love Yoko Ono. I’ve always admired her – even when I knew little about her. On the one hand there was something of a mystery about her – partly created by awful rumours, that somehow, she’d broken up the Beatles. She was being framed as the other, evil, foreign woman, the witch luring away the golden boy. Of course it was a complete lie, but she was hated for it. And, on the other hand, she was so wacky and defied convention, in ways people didn’t quite understand – and that of course reinforced the harmful stereotypes.
In fact, when she met John Lennon, Yoko Ono was already an established artist in her own right and an accomplished musician. But few people knew or were even cared about conceptual or participatory performance art. Lennon on the other hand was totally mesmerised and they grew to become a great partnership. But somehow, for a long time, in the public eye, she lived in his shadow. Now, finally, she has her own retrospective, Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind, at Tate Modern, spanning a whole seven decades and celebrating her work as an artist and activist.
Reading about her childhood, growing up in Tokyo during the World War II and her family being evacuated to the countryside, while US forces were bombing the city, later dropping the first atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki – it makes complete sense that she became such a passionate and tireless campaigner for peace.
As you approach the exhibition entrance you are greeted by her beautiful Wish Trees. There is a richness and a depth to her work that reveal an artist who is thoughtful, provocative, and playful - all at the same time. She has an unusual way of pulling you in, of playing with you, of inviting your participation by leaving ‘instructions’. And suddenly, you just find yourself thinking and enacting her instructions in your head. She published 150 such ‘instructions’ in her book Grapefruit (1964) - a theme that has endured in her work over the decades.
In 1953, she joined her parents in New York, where she studied poetry and musical composition. There, she joined – in the periphery at least - the international and interdisciplinary Fluxus art movement. In the late 1950’s and 60’s, she performing with other avant-garde artists and had her first solo exhibition, which included her Instructions for Paintings, in Manhattan, in 1961.
Cut Piece, first performed at the Yamaichi Concert Hall in Kyoto, Japan, in 1964, is a complete tour the force of feminist participatory and performance art, in which she sits on the floor, passive and vulnerable, while members of the audience are invited on stage to cut her clothes to shreds – literally laying bare the role of the female body in art. It is so many things at once – subtle, yet bold, intimate, and provocative. It examines the male and female gaze, as well as the relationship between viewer, participant, and art object/subject. Cut Piece is 60 years old – and has never ceased to be relevant!
Just blue
like the ocean
y.o.
There are 200 of Yoko Ono’s art works on display. No write up can really do it justice. There is A LOT in this exhibition, a lot that requires your undivided attention. Yoko herself, the nature of her art, the boundaries that she pushes, all demand your constant presence, consideration and participation – it is extraordinary and challenging in equal measure.
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