The Sound of Lewisham: 1950s to Now
Lewisham is an important historical centre for Black British music. Legendary sound systems such as Jah Shaka, Saxon Studio International and the influential Lover's Rock music genre and record label, along with chart topping Black British artists such as Carroll Thompson, Janet Kay, Tippa Irie and Maxi Priest all have musical roots in the borough. Sound system culture is an intrinsic part of Lewisham's musical evolution, becoming a voice for the people. There is much to learn about the social and political dynamics of the borough from a historical perspective throughout the decades.
The Sound of Lewisham traces Lewisham's sound system history via a timeline. It explores the borough's music culture by outlining and analysing the political and social environment of the time, including Lewisham's migration history, key political events and shifts, and how these social dynamics influenced the creation of the borough's musical culture.
The Sound of Lewisham documents the local music scene, whilst still emphasizing the importance of geography such as key venues and spaces that contributed to the rise of sound system culture. it follows on from the pioneering work of Goldsmiths researchers Lez Back and William "Lez" Henry in Lewisham.
The Sound of Lewisham: 1950s to Now
The Sound of Lewisham: 1950s to Now
We were drawn to this retreat due to the caring, nurturing nature and atmosphere of the week that we felt would suit our needs and practices at the moment. We view the collaborative process as both art and resistance: resisting the individualising, isolating world in which we live. We also felt that the retreat would represent a form of self care and care for others. Making, thinking and talking about art in a restful, retreating environment, away from the pressures of day to day life would be useful for us to think through the creative and philosophical ideas we have. We are artists, thinkers and activists: racialised and gendered.
We Will Rest: A Black Feminist Manifesto
Sonic resistance and sonic rebellion are the shared areas of interest we would like to explore at the retreat. Each of us have variously and creatively made explorations into sound, using sound as a way to disrupt conceptions of femininity, racialisation and legacies of colonialism. We are also interested in the practices of solidarity and care. Care and caring for one another we feel is a strategy against the exploitative world in which we live, particularly as women of colour working in academia and the arts, we feel that this retreat would help us reconnect with each other, recalibrate and simply rest/think.
The hidden geographies of religious creativity
Religious activity, particularly as associated with what might be called everyday organized religion, has been unconsidered in recent discussions of the geographies and policies relating to creativity, and has been almost absent in the discipline of Geography's recent 'creative turn'. We argue both that religion has been given little or no attention in academic discussions of vernacular creativity, while arts policy as it developed in the UK in the postwar period has had a strongly secular focus. This continues in more recent policies and initiatives that have sought to promote the amateur and voluntary arts sectors. We explore the reasons for these absences, before turning to examples of strongly creative practice in a range of case studies, focused in a small area of suburban west London. These show a remarkable diversity of creativity including the design, construction and transformation of buildings and spaces for religious worship, but also in ritual, performance and the everyday practices of making sacred space. Our case studies include examination of performance and material culture in a Tamil-speaking Hindu temple, and in Roman Catholic, Anglican and Pentecostal churches. These include changes to architectural form, stained glass art-work, community craft projects, and musical performance and composition. We suggest that religious creativity has a hidden significance that has become more important in the UK's increasingly diverse cities and suburbs, and that significant population groups are marginalized in creativity debates and policies that focus on the secular arts. We also suggest that there are distinctive characteristics to what we describe as 'devotional creativity', particularly in different understandings of space, practice and experience.
Gilbert, David; Dwyer, Claire; Ahmed, Nazneen; Cuch, Laura and Hyacinth, Natalie. 2019. The hidden geographies of religious creativity: place-making and material culture in West London faith communities. Cultural Geographies, 26(1), pp. 23-41
Link can be accessed here: (57) The hidden geographies of religious creativity: place-making and material culture in West London faith communities
The hidden geographies of religious creativity
‘Gifts and Talents’: Sacred and Secular Musical Performance at a Suburban British Pentecostal Church
‘Gifts and Talents’: Sacred and Secular Musical Performance at a Suburban British Pentecostal Church
‘Gifts and Talents’: Sacred and Secular Musical Performance at a Suburban British Pentecostal Church
The binary between what constitutes the sacred and the secular has long been a prominent feature in debates concerning religious music. The recent global growth of Pentecostal megachurches that, in large part, rely on secular music styles as a central feature of congregational repertoire has brought once again into sharp focus discussions on the meaning of the sacred and the secular binary in contemporary, mission driven churches. This chapter will examine these long running debates through the ideal of ‘gifts and talents’, a Biblically inspired view of human creativity and innovation practiced at Ealing Christian Centre, a west London suburban Pentecostal church. Gifts and talents are a divine, spiritual practice through which congregants and worship team members utilize and perform their creative talents for praise and worship, drawing from commercial, secular styles that are re-imagined as ‘gifts’ from God. The study proposes that the ideal of gifts and talents at Ealing Christian Centre provides not only a scriptural and theological backdrop to musical performance at the church, but offers insight into the ways in which contemporary secular styles become a central feature of Pentecostal worship services. Musical talent and creativity thus act as a vehicle through which congregants connect with the spiritual realm through worship as well as intersect with the commercial music industry for modern, cutting edge performance styles and practices, thereby continuing the historical cultural tradition of the blurring of sacred and secular boundaries.
Black Techne: Sonic Afro Futures
Black Techne: Sonic Afro Futures
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Dub Come Save Me
Dub Come Save Me: The Diasporic Roots of UK Dub in Black Music in Britain in the 21st Century book, 2023
Since the turn of the 21st century, there have been several genres birthed from or nurtured in Black Britain: funky & tribal House, Afrobeats, Grime, Afro Swing, UK Drill, Road Rap, Trap etc. This pioneering book brings together diverse diasporan sounds in conversation. A valuable resource for those interested in the study of 21st century Black music and related cultures in Britain, this book goes incorporates the significant Black Atlantean, global interactions within Black music across time and space. It examines and proposes theoretical approaches, contributing to building a holistic appreciation of 21st century Black British music and its multidimensional nature. This book proffers an academically curated, rigorous, holistic view of Black British music in the 21st century. Drawing from pioneering academics in the emerging field and industry professionals, the book will serve academic theory, as well as the views, debates and experiences of industry professionals in a complementary style that shows the synergies between diasporas and interdisciplinary conversations. The book is interdisciplinary. It draws from sociology, musicology and the emerging digital humanities fields, to make its arguments and develop a multi-disciplinary perspective about Black British music in the 21st century.
Distant Islands, Spectral Cities: A Sound-system Cartography of Survival, Paris 2024
In this third iteration of the 2023/24 Banister Fletcher Global Fellowship programme, we welcome to Paris Dr Natalie Hyacinth, who participated in the first ‘Distant Islands, Spectral Cities’ gathering in London in March. Hyacinth will elaborate upon her research into the history of Black British music, specifically The Sound of Lewisham, a project that maps sound systems in the Lewisham borough of London, developed for the ERC-funded Sonic Street Technologies research grant. This musical survey is also a historical work on migration and the formation of the social and political consciousness of the Caribbean community, emphasizing the role of sound systems as ‘a call for survival, Black pride and communal resilience against a hostile world’. The research, which documents the local music scene, covers several decades and follows the pioneering work of Professors Les Back and William ‘Lez’ Henry, the latter of whom participated in the April programme of ‘Distant Islands, Spectral Cities’, also in Paris. In publishing this work as a freely accessible printed brochure, ‘The sound of Lewisham from the 1950s to now’, Hyacinth testifies to the desire to consider the circulation of knowledge beyond the walls of the university and to engage local communities in the reappropriation and stewardship of a living archive.
K-Hand, referred to as the ‘First Lady of Detroit’ passed away in 2021 with little biographical or archival data on her extraordinary impact on techno music. From the 1990s, she steadily released albums that changed the face of modern electronic music, along the way developing close relationships with the German and UK dance scenes. Despite her gift, K-Hand passed away without adequate recognition of her impact on the electronic music world and its spawning scenes. K Hand’s story underscores the reality and experiences of many Black female producers in dance and electronic music and broader popular music culture. Often seen as the ‘voice’ of the music, rather than the producers, Black women have systematically faced erasure and displacement in a globally influential genre they helped created. However, Black women are also leading the way to change this with the collective recognition that their histories must be strategically documented, archived and restored. Adopting a Black feminist archiving practice of firstly forming an ‘archival consciousness’ (Burin & Sowinski, 2021), various Black feminist groups have begun to intentionally archive their cultural history. This paper will examine the ways in which emergent Black feminist archiving practice has been applied to electronic music. Specifically, the paper will explore the ways in which Black feminist archival practices redraws the Black female experience through sonic technology, with the claim that Black women are and historically have been 'technical' too.