Heartbeats
Notting Hill Carnival in 2014 (image by Adrian Boot, courtesy of the British Library).
The sound of splashing waves welcomes visitors into the British Library’s latest exhibition Beyond the Bassline, while rich folds of blue curtains rise and fall around a display case filled with accounts of the earliest recorded Black musician in Britain: John Blanke, a trumpeter in royal Tudor courts. “Despite centuries of forced migration, our memories and voices still travel on the waves that our ancestors once crossed,” the wall text reads, illustrating the Atlantic Ocean as a symbol of a shared Black culture that transcends borders. “Whether real or imagined, the ocean still provides the beat that anchors the spirit of Black musicians.”
From the very start of the exhibition, curated by Aleema Gray and Mykaell Riley, historical archives and the radical power of imagination are given equal weight. Beyond the Bassline puts five centuries of objects and audio in conversation with artworks by contemporary artists and community groups from across the UK, to invite visitors to reflect on the influence of Black British music on the nation’s history, culture and politics. The exhibition texts read like poetry and frequently use the first-person plural to speak on behalf of the Black British community, making it feel poignantly personal. “Our music allows us to cross lines of race, social class and gender,” it reads. “We are here. And we have a right to be here.” These texts also invite visitors to reflect on particular themes, pulling them into an active engagement with topics such as the connection between wellbeing, spiritual resilience and political resistance.
Image by Terna Jogo, courtesy of the British Library.
Beyond the Bassline is the first major exhibition to document the 500-year musical journey of Black people in Britain, and it is part of a move to make the British Library’s archives more accessible and to bridge the gap between popular culture and heritage institutions. The exhibition also reflects a wider shift towards honouring the design ingenuity of marginalised cultures as expressed through sound and music, including projects such as Joseph Zeal Henry’s Shubz sound system parties held inside the V&A and SOAS, and Onkar Kular’s events exploring how sound systems have redesigned and remapped cities in the UK and Sweden.
The exhibition traces technological advancements that made listening to music more accessible. The popularisation of the printing press in the 19th century allowed Black British classical composers such as Samuel Coleridge-Taylor to publish sheet music, bringing their art out of opera houses and concert halls and into homes and smaller venues. The invention of the gramophone in this era also enabled a more diverse audience to listen to recordings at home, while the television in the early 20th century brought a surge of Black female talents such as Shirley Bassey and pianist Winifred Atwell, the first Black musician to have a UK No.1 hit, into people’s hearts and homes. But the most inspiring innovations were spearheaded by Black communities as part of a DIY creative culture that flourished in spite of discrimination and exclusion.
Sound systems in 1983 (image by Richard Saunders, courtesy of the British Library).
The culture of customising sound systems to play music as loudly as possible came to the UK from Jamaica with the Windrush generation in the 1950s and 60s, creating a vibrant social life for Black British people outside of the establishments that barred them. Jamaican sound engineer King Tubby’s wooden sound system, complete with jaunty hand-painted lettering, is on display in the exhibition, as is the Mighty Ruler, which was built and operated by engineer Count Rob in London’s Wood Green. Its flashing red, yellow and green lights beckoned crowds in the dark rooms of dancehalls and West Indian living rooms towards the beat of the music, and provided enough light for the selector to pick the next record. Contemporary speakers by Friendly Pressure, run by self-taught audio builder Shivas Howard Brown, are also exhibited, which combine modern manufacturing techniques with the sound and component quality of vintage models. Brown’s sound system is mounted with 3D-printed resin horns that both amplify sound and act as decorative elements.
Sound systems like these played music which was snubbed by British clubs and radio shows, and in the 1980s Black communities took this a step further and hijacked the airwaves through pirate radio. The exhibition features a series of video interviews exploring the family atmosphere of these stations, with figures such as DJ Lepke, founder of Dread Broadcasting Corporation, Britain’s first Black-owned radio station. Moving into the 90s and early 2000s, the Walkman CD players that helped to popularise grime mixtapes are on display alongside the Sony Playstation, a console which, when paired with the studio simulator game Music 2000, allowed artists to produce the low-fi samples which became part of the DIY vocabulary of the genre. The Nokia 3310, a brick phone with rubber buttons like gummy sweets, is also exhibited; composing ringtones on it was artist JME’s first ever attempt at music production. “The 3310’s legacy is as durable as the device itself,” the exhibition text reads. “Skepta, Dizzee Rascal and Wiley have all referenced it and its tinny sounds in their tracks.”
A display featuring King Tubby’s Hometown Hi-Fi sound system (image by Terna Jogo, courtesy of the British Library).
The advent of social media platforms in the 2000s paved the way for more music media platforms uplifting Black British artists. The chunky video camera Jamal Edwards used to start SB.TV, the first YouTube channel dedicated to Black British music in 2006 is on display, alongside covers of GUAP magazine, founded in 2015 by Jide Adetunji and Ibrahim Kamara to showcase diverse up-and-coming creative talent. Edwards was only 15 when he started SB.TV, and Adetunji and Kamara set up GUAP while studying at Kent University. The pair had no formal qualifications or experience in graphic design or video production, and used free online resources to make their vision of integrating augmented reality and video into GUAP a reality.
Beyond the Bassline's exhibition design, by architectural design studio Freehaus, immerses visitors in the history of Black British sound through placemaking. Red curtains and hanging lamps bring viewers into spaces such as Soho’s Shim Sham club where Black performers took to the stage in the 1930s; vibrant yellow walls frame designer Hughborn Condor’s towering, kaleidoscopic peacock costume made for Leeds West Indian Carnival, which was first founded in 1967; and walls of records, from roots reggae to lovers’ rock, bring visitors inside 1980s record shops. But the design really shines in the spaces that invite visitors to pause. At the midpoint of the exhibition is a small, brightly-lit white conservatory with domed ceilings. Here, visitors can sit on a bench and listen to a soundscape produced and arranged by Roots Hitek and Renée Landell, which layers archival audio of sermons in UK Black-majority churches with gospel instrumentation and vocal harmonies. This unexpectedly peaceful space has a kind of holiness which draws visitors into the beauty of the present moment by encouraging them to take a breath.
A peacock costume designed by Hughborn Condor for Leeds West Indian Carnival (image by Terna Jogo, courtesy of the British Library).
“The philosophical principle ‘arguments from silence’ underpins the design approach, with absence and pause holding as much weight as sound and beat,” Freehaus writes on its website. The principle, which refers to academic arguments in areas of history where records are sparse, is creatively reimagined in parts of the exhibition that are designed for visitors to take stock of the present moment. The final room of the exhibition is laid out like an afterparty, with cushions scattered on the floor and a specially commissioned film directed by Tayo Rapoport and Rohan Ayinde in collaboration with the South London-based musical movement and curatorial platform Touching Bass projected on the walls and the ceiling. Here, the wall text invites viewers to “embrace the power of collective gathering and deep listening,” as the film takes them on a non-linear, afrosurrealist journey, exploring the potential for Black British music to manifest reparative futures.
Beyond the Bassline achieves the monumental task of narrating 500 years of history while never feeling static or ossified. The final film uses the symbolism of the black hole, with its potential to rupture space and time, as a portal for Black radical imagination. But time-travel happens throughout the exhibition; the design purposefully pulls visitors in and out of the past and the present, while encouraging them to envisage a radical future. The exhibition ends with the ceiling being consumed by a black hole stretching, yawning and swirling, offering the possibility of a quantum leap.
Words Helen Gonzalez Brown