In 9 days, I'll be back in my beloved Nairobi, all these years later...
I loved living in Kenya and I'm so exciting to go again.
If you're still in town, and still checking this blog, let me know!
Hoping to see some of you there...
best,
melissa
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| In Nairobi National Park, in Feb. 2011 |
The new exhibition shows not only how African and Afro-Caribbean music infused British culture over the years, but also how it reflects its society's multiculturalism today.
The V&A East is the new iteration of the world renowned Victoria & Albert Museum. It opened in the London district of Stratford (where the Olympic Park emerged in 2012), on Saturday 18 April, with a wealth of guests, journalists and curators.The inaugural exhibition, titled 'The Music is Black: A British Story', offers a survey of Black music from the UK, starting with early drumbeats brought back from Africa and going up to the latest innovations in popular music on the island.
Augustus 'Gus' Casely-Hayford is the director of V&A East. The British curator was formerly director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, DC, USA. At the press viewing, he said that young people, in the boroughs of East London in particular, where the museum is set, "were absolutely critical" in choosing 'The Music Is Black' as the inaugural exhibition.
"We wanted something that would speak to their hopes and dreams," he told a busy crowd of journalists and guests. "Young people go to football matches here, spend their money on music, but would they come to an exhibition? Would they spend their money on exhibitions?" he asked.He worked to find ways to challenge that paradigm.
"Black British music is the music we fall in love to, the music that we listen to at great events," he continued. "It's also the music that tells those informal stories and reflects our political history as a nation."
The team planned to create a space that reflects the stories of the global majoriry, especially from African and Caribbean roots, "the unreflected stories", he called them, and to do so "in ways that inspire and offer hope," he concluded, acclaimed by the audience.
Reggae, dub, ska, drum & bass, jungle, grime... all emerged in the UK as offspring of African music after it had travelled to the West Indies and the British Empire in general.
The genres presented in the exhibitions also include jazz, soul music, funk, lovers rock, two-tone, rocksteady, dub, trip hop, garage and drill.
Famous voices are featured, including Dame Shirley Bassey (and her unforgettable theme for the 'Goldfinger' James Bond film), Joan Armatrading, Sade, Seal, Tricky, Skunk Anansie’s Skin and Little Simz.
But, even before them, Black composers contributed to classical music in the UK, like Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912), then to jazz and to British soul music, including Winifred Atwell – the first Black artist to have a number one hit in the UK singles chart.
The show displays over 200 objects, including iconic photos but also records, documents, stage costumes, instruments, films... and even art pieces from contemporary creators, including Thomas J. Price, whose paternal family hails from Jamaica, and is part of the so-called 'Windrush generation'."The first act provides the vertebrae, the spinal cord for all the acts to follow. It provides a deeper history," Springer told me.
"It tells us a long story about the way in which humans, as a species, have the need and compulsion to express themselves, also in relation to social politics, cultural ideas, emotions."
Then the show moves into what occurs on the West African coasts from the 1400s onward, when the Portuguese then British explorers first arrived on African shores, ushering in "a sense of competition continentally for the riches of the African continent," according to Springer, who is also a former music journalist, a lecturer and event curator.Act I looks at the historical exchanges between Africa and Britain from the 1400s, including a deep exploration of the role of spiritual beliefs in music and of forced conversions to Christian religions.
"We also look at how the transatlantic African enslavement was permeated and legalised in the United Kingdom," Springer said, "with documents from the British Library providing empirical evidence of that."
"Act II travels from the 1900s to the 1960s, looking at music and the world wars," Springer told me. "It looks at the phenomenon that is jazz, the presence of the blues."
To her, the centrepiece of the exhibition is Atwell's piano. Born in Trinidad in 1914, the pianist and composer migrated to Britain and enjoyed great popularity from the 1950s with a series of boogie-woogie and ragtime hits, selling over 20 million records."That's the very piano that she played on," Springer is proud to say. "She would play with two pianos, a classical piano, and this kind of broken down ragtime piano, showing her versatility as a musician, but also the fact that she could play jazz as well as classical music."
Act III, which is the core of the exhibition, is the one dedicated to the British black music genres that emerged in the UK iafter World War II and the arrival of the 'Windrush generation', from the West Indies, after decades of multicultural brewing.
"The stories in Act III are what inspired the title, 'The Music is Black, a British story'. This is the British story," for Springer.
She gives an example: lovers rock.
"Lovers rock is the first reggae form of music created outside of Jamaica," she said. "It's slower, but it is as political. It can be escapist, it's romantic, but the vocal delivery of artists like Janet Kay, Louisa Marks, Carol Thompson, Jean Adamo, Adebambo offers a deployment of warmth and authority of sensuality never heard."
And that was really important at a time when the United Kingdom, in the 1970s, "was going through the political climate that it did," she adds, referring to immigration, the rise of the far right and movement against racism, then to Thatcherism.
From Pauline Black, the lead singer of the 2 Tone group The Selector, to Sade, Seal and Tricky, the exhibition also shows the creativity that came into black music beyond London, from places like Coventry and Bristol."Soundsystem culture from Jamaica and reggae was coming in again in these towns, and then that's smoothed out for trip hop. It still has the ingredients of turn-tablism, of singing like lovers rock, but there's a political undertone, but there's also an emotional interrogation," Springer insists.
Bands like The Specials, Soul II Soul, Massive Attack, a singer like Martina Topley-Bird, and the dub master Mad Professor all inherited from the innovations that gave the Bristol sound.Springer added that it also retells a complex, rich but often crual history too, linked to a brutal colonial exploitation and the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade, including racist police brutality, inequality in media treatment and episodes of uprising.
If in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, black British music got redefined by musicians with strong links to Jamaica and more widely the British West Indies and Guyana, during the 1980s and up to our days, African musicians have made their voices heard increasingly.
Neneh Cherry, Sade, Keziah Jones, as well as, more recently, Skepta and Stormzy, the two rappers who brought British hip-hop to a new level in the past decade, all have links to West Africa, from Sierra Leone to Nigeria.
Festivals like WOMAD also contributed to popularising African music in England from the 1980s.
"In Act IV, we're looking at imported music, this time from British born black artists, and at how it travels all the way from classical again through folk, R&B, dance, punk, electronica, rap, gospel, jazz, drill, Afrobeats, the the new incarnation incarnation inspired by Fela Kuti," the curator explained.
In more recent years, the link between black British musicians and Africa itself seems to have deepened too, with a long list of artists coming from Nigeria notably, including Wizkid, from Lagos, collaborating with other black British musicians like Arlos Parks and Greentea Peng, living and working in London."We're thus also looking at how art was reconfigured by British artists responding to imported music," Jacqueline concludes.
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Attacks took place in at least four locations in Mali this Saturday, my RFI colleagues have learned:
Kidal, in the far north, Gao, the main city in the north of the country, Sévaré, Mopti, in the center, and Kati, near Bamako, which houses the residence of the head of the junta, General Assimi Goïta.
Mali's army confirmed on Saturday it was involved in clashes with armed fighters who had attacked army barracks in the capital Bamako and other areas in the country.
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Since 2012, jihadist groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group have fought with security services.
Community-based criminal groups and separatists have also added to the tension.
The military government in Mali, like its counterparts in neighbouring Niger and Burkina Faso, has severed ties with former colonial ruler France and several western countries, which tried to help with the insurgencies in the 2010s, unsucccessfully. The junta chose to move closer politically and militarily to Russia.
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Tricky announced today the release of his new album: Different When It’s Silent.
Just when I was writing about him, after visiting and reporting at the 'Music Is Black' exhibition in London...
It'll be released on 17 July 2026 via False Idols.
His new single, featuring Marta Złakowska, is titled 'Out of Place':
My visual insight:
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| Curator Jacqueline Springer |
The V&A East opened in Stratford, London, UK, on Sat. 18 April 2026.
The exhibition runs until January 2027.
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More to come in an article and a video, and in my podcast next week.
The newest museum to open in London opens tomorrow, Saturday 18 April 2026, with a special exhbition on Black British music!
I was at the press viewing.
'The Music is Black: A British Story' retells 125 years of Black music-making in Britain at the new Victoria & Albert Museum in Stratford.
"Spanning four continents, this is a story of excellence, struggle, resilience and joy," the museum promises.
It's a travel through time as over 120 tracks from every era play directly through a headset.
More than an exhibition, this immersive sound experience explores the power and impact of Black "British music."
INSIGHT IN PICTURES:
The curator, Jacqueline Spinger, was a wonderful interviewee!!
More soon, in my RFI podcast.
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And a few more pictures from Bristol:
New podcast episode:
This week in Spotlight on Africa: Sudan’s war enters its fourth year, with no sign of easing since fighting erupted on 15 April 2023. The conflict is intensifying, amid fresh accusations of foreign interference – most recently involving Ethiopia.
Details here;
People are about to starve at the 4 corners of the Earth and more regimes increase military spendings, while the US uses billion to re-visit the Moon...
Sometimes, I feel our world is so senseless, it's beyond what explanations or reporting can handle...
Un beau documentaire sur la lutte pour les droits des femmes et des anciens prisoniers politiques au Maroc, avec la militante Fatna El Bouih, réalisé par Hélène Harder
Le film a été montré en France samedi dernier au Panomra des Cinémas du Maghreb et du Moyen-Orient, à Saint-Denis.
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[FR] Dans 'Fatna, une femme nommée Rachid', tiré du récit de Fatna El Bouih paru en 2016, Hélène Harder nous dresse le portrait au présent de cette militante marocaine des droits humains. Le parcours de cette icône du militantisme dans les rues de Casablanca nous raconte aussi le combat des femmes d’aujourd’hui dans un pays conservateur.
[EN] In 'Fatna, a woman named Rachid', based on Fatna El Bouih's 2016 memoir, Hélène Harder paints a portrait of this Moroccan human rights activist in the present day. The journey of this icon of activism in the streets of Casablanca also tells us about the struggle of women today in a conservative country.
Un film de Hélène Harder
Maroc, France, Belgique – 2025
Ancienne disparue durant les « années de plomb », Fatna El Bouih poursuit aujourd’hui discrètement de nombreux combats au Maroc.
Dans un contexte conservateur où la répression perdure, nous la suivons à travers les rues de Casablanca d’une action à l’autre.
C’est l’histoire d’une survivante qui poursuit son rêve d’enfant : avoir un rôle politique, envers et contre tout et ne plus disparaître. Le combat quotidien et permanent d’une femme extraordinaire, en quête de justice, de mémoire et de transmission.
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This week, in Spotlight on Africa, we feature the work on CFK Africa to fight gender-based violence in Kibera, Nairobi:
In Kenya, the charity is working with landlords to fight violence against women – in particular the one experienced in overcrowded, impoverished areas.
To know more about how the programme works and what CFK Africa and landlords in Kibera can do against gender-based violence, we have in this episode: Siama Yusuf, senior programme officer for girls empowerment, at CFK Africa, and Geoffrey Wesonga, a landlord in Kibera, who joined the programme.
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| Photo: CFK Africa |
Spotlight on Africa - The Kenyan landlords helping fight gender-based violence
Listen here: https://www.rfi.fr/en/podcasts/spotlight-on-africa/20260331-the-kenyan-landlords-helping-fight-gender-based-violence
or here on Apple Podcasts.
or - newly now! - on YouTube:
