Black British Music and the people who made it, from Tudor times to
the mid '60s.
This is a story of empire, colonialism and then the new energies
released by the movements for freedom and independence of the post
second-world-war years; of the movements of peoples across borders; of
the flow of music around the triangle that takes in Africa, the
Caribbean, the USA and Great Britain; of temporary but highly
influential visitors like Paul Robeson; and of the settlement of
ex-colonial peoples who brought their music to Britain, and changed its
forms and concerns in the new context. It is the story of institutions
like the military that provided spaces for black musicians, but it is
also the story of individuals like John Blanke, the black trumpeter in
the court of Henry VIII, Ignatius Sancho the composer and friend of
Laurence Sterne in the 18th century, early nineteenth century street
performers such as Joseph Johnson and Billy Waters, child prodigies such
as George Bridgewater and composers such as Samuel Coleridge-Taylor in
the later 19th whose music is still played today. Above all, it is the
story of those individuals who changed the face of British music in the
post-war period, who collectively fertilized British jazz, popular music
and street theatre in ways that continue to evolve in the present.
This is the story of the Windrush generation who brought calypso and
steelband to Britain's streets, Caribbean jazz musicians such as Joe
Harriot and Shake Keane, or escapees from apartheid South Africa, such
as Chris McGregor and Dudu Pukwana who brought modernity and the sounds
of Soweto to British jazz, and a later generation who gave ska and
reggae distinctive British accents. Based on extensive research and many
first-hand interviews, one of the great virtues of Kevin Le Gendre's
book is lack of London-centricity, its recognition that much important
development took place in cities such as Manchester, Leeds and Bristol.
As a noted reviewer of black music for the BBC, the Independent, Echoes
and other journals, Le Gendre brings together both a sense of historical
purpose and the ability to actually describe music in vivid and
meaningful ways.
