​Lloyd Bradley
London, England
History belongs to those who write it down, and as one of the UK’s leading black music experts and cultural commentators, Lloyd Bradley has been documenting modern black music and culture from the UK, Jamaica and the US for over forty years.
​Lloyd Bradley
London, England
"A wonderful celebration of the contribution Africans and Caribbeans have made to music we now know as pop" – Dr Shirley J Thompson
Black Sound
British Black Music's Journey of Creative Independence
Conceived and co-curated by Lloyd Bradley and Scott Leonard in 2017 and launched at the Black Cultural Archive in Windrush Square, Brixton, the following year Black Sound is an exhibition of British black music and those who made it. The presentation explores over100 years of creativity and ingenuity to celebrate the players, promoters, producers and punters that shaped the UK’s musical and social history.
Combining sound, moving image, archive material and interactive
involvement it dynamically tells the story of British black music. The narrative is thematically divided in order to reconnect the music to the culture
that created it and to set it firmly within the shifting contexts of time, technology and entrepreneurial opportunity. Black Sound is set out to tell the story of the music's history, by linking individuals, generations and genres, tracking the evolution of multi-cultural Britain, through sound, into maisntream success on its own terms.
The exhibition features a continuous timeline marking the turning points and important events that shaped Britain’s black music -musical, political and social. Unique visuals representing over 100 of the most significant records reflect that progress as creative output, while such vital planks of the evolution as
record shops and magazines get their own presentations alongside display cabinets dedicated to the narrative's key elements.
Since the Black Cultural Archive, Black Sound has been installed at the Bernie Grant Arts Centre in Tottenham, London, and Coventry University's Delia Derbyshire
building. At this latter venue, as with the Barbican Music Library, the exhibition has been supplemented with two Heritage Collection Days, at which members of Britain's Black Music Nation, past and present, bring artefacts that connect them to British black music and tell the tale of this relationship to be recorded and held on a free
access larchive. The story of the music as told by the people who lived in it. A truly unique experience reflecting a truly unique musical story.
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Black Sound London at the Barbican Music Library
Black Sound: Black British Music's
Journey of Creative Independence
Jazzie B of Soul II Soul and Black Sound co-curator Lloyd Bradley walk through the original Black Sound exhibition in Brixton's Black Cultural Archive. ​​​
Scott Leonard
& Lloyd Bradley outside
Black Sound, Coventry