Black Sound (1930-1990)

This exhibit covers a key 60-year period of musical creativity and DIY ingenuity for Black music in Britain: migrating from the margins to 're-master the mainstream'. This exhibition celebrates the pioneers that made it happen, changing the course of Britain's cultural history.

 Founded by Amy Ashwood Garvey and Sam Manning (Calypso’s first international superstar), in the mid-1930s, the Florence Mills Social Parlour (named after the American dancer and cabaret singer) was a jazz club where West Africa met the West Indies in the West End of London.

In many ways, the Parlour began the journey to creative independence. To a soundtrack of calypso-flavoured jazz, Black people from all walks of life (and across the Commonwealth) exchanged arts and ideas with each other. London’s first steel band debuted there in 1952.

Trinidadian calypso became popular in Britain from the late 1940's, led by singers such as Lord Kitchener, born ‘Aldwyn Roberts’ in the borough of Arima in Trinidad and Tobago. This reflected the new Black settlements to the UK in the post-war period.

Steel pan had been popular during the 1930s but reached its zenith in the 1950s with the likes of Sterling Betancourt, Boscoe Holder and Russ Henderson. The performance of the Trinidad All Steel Percussion Orchestra at the 1951 Festival of Britain brought it to new audiences.

Black artists founded their own record labels to support Black British talent as well as bring talent and music from the Caribbean to Britain. Trojan Records was founded in 1967, named after producer Duke Reid, known as The Trojan. 

Conventional record industries either excluded domestic Black talent or drastically modified the output to suit imagined mainstream tastes. In the face of such frustration, DIY was the only way forward. With that came creative control, fiscal responsibility and artistic freedom.

Jamaicans who had settled in the UK (and their children who had been born here) were instrumental in setting up a network of reggae sound systems. The most popular sound systems included Jah Shaka, Coxsone Outernational, Fatman, Jah Tubbys and Quaker City.

'Black Echoes', the first Black music newspaper in Britain, started in 1976. Featured music genres were soul, reggae, RnB, jazz, gospel, funk and northern soul. The paper became a gateway for the distribution of information and news on reggae music in the UK and Jamaica.

Roots reggae became increasingly popular with Britain’s Black working-class youth from the 1970s onwards, its message of Rastafari and overcoming injustice striking a chord with those on the receiving end of racism and poverty. 

Lover's rock, developed in the 1970s, was a smooth, soulful version of reggae, spearheaded by Dennis Brown. The early years of "lover’s rock" have two main resonances: London "blues parties" and discs by girl singers. 

In the 1980s bands such as Aswad, Steel Pulse and Misty in Roots released records and played gigs throughout Britain. As roots music's popularity waned in Jamaica, sound systems such as Jah Shaka kept the faith in the UK, known as UK DUB. 

The magazine 'Straight No Chaser' was started by music lover and journalist, Paul Bradshaw in 1988 to cover the emerging Black music scene that he saw expanding across Britain. That year, the 'second summer of love' solidified the influence of house music on British shores.

The music styles and communities which were previously held in contempt by the wider record business became irrepressible, forcing the industry to try and keep up. Subsequent generations built upon this work, continuing to ‘remaster the mainstream’.

Later, commercially successful propositions such as Jammer’s Lords of the Mic DVD series (2004) and Janet Kay, Victor Romero Evans and Carroll Thompsons music’n’drama touring stage show: The Lovers Rock Monologues reflected the achievements of these pioneering generations.

This is a snapshot into the stories of the players, promoters, producers and punters that changed Britain’s cultural history. To find out more, the following exhibits and resources may also be useful: A History of Notting Hill Carnival
and Black Sound Subject Guide.