500 Years of Black Music in Britain show was great

Today was Bank Holiday in London. So much is closed as people take off from work.

This break offered a great chance to visit the British Library and see the exhibit on black music in Britain. My summer 2022 Alabama at Oxford students enrolled in my “Music and Race in the UK” course would have appreciated this show had it been up back then. So would the ones enrolled in my “Bebop to Hip Hop: Music in Young America” class at the University of Alabama. I recall having two young women from Britain who were exchange students enrolled in that course the last time I taught it and they loved grime!

This exhibit resonated for other reasons. The Grant Green Story, a 2017 documentary I co-directed and co-produced, features my late former father in law, the jazz guitarist, at Ronnie Scott’s famous club in London in 1969. See the beginning of the clip below.

Indeed, I wish there had been more jazz represented in the show and a bigger space for visitors to move through the rich archive on display. And it’s outside the framing, but I would have also appreciated hearing a lot more about the cross-fertilization of music in the postwar period, especially all of that great music emerging between 1970s and late last century, Loose Ends, Brand New Heavies, Soul II Soul, Lisa Stansfield, Swing Out Sister, Incognito, etc.

Aside from that, wonderful job.

Visiting this show was a wonderful way to end a three-day holiday weekend. My husband and I spent Saturday in Oxford. The walk down memory lane included a visit to Jericho, my favorite neighborhood. It’s near Worcester College, the institution where Alabama professors and students lodge during our study abroad program. I love that Oxford neighborhood. I have my pub, my theatre, wine shop, book store, coffee shop, corner store and charity shop. I told my husband if we ever come to the UK again for research, Oxford is our base and we’re commuting to London whenever we need to do as much! I love all of the arts and archives in the big city, but I am increasingly needing quiet as I age!