The Forgotten Black British Musicians in History

Have you ever pondered on the thought of why there are not so many successful Black British music star comebacks in the British Music Industry?

Let me be clear from the start that what I mean by the word “successful” has been culminated from three perspectives.

1: The artiste is recognised culturally in the country of its residence for the artistic approach to their music craft.

2. The artiste does not spend over five years writing and producing their albums.

3. The artiste is not only successful in this country of the United Kingdom but other countries around the world as well.

I know there are discrepancies in these three statements left on their own viewpoints.

My thesis is a document study of Black British Music achievement in history, and my views of why these artistes’s are not even mentioned in the appreciation of Black British Music by Music journalists, College/Universities, Music Institutions/Societies and other academia. I will not be concentrating on a particular musician’s genre, but random genres to back up my views on this subject.

Like Black people themselves there have been black musicians working in Great Britain since the early part of the nineteenth century. For the British population present in 21st Century ,the Black British composers and the Black British musicians who had made a significant contribution to British music of the period; have by and large been forgotten about from the annuls of British history books. A name such as Samuel Coleridge-Taylor who was a Black composer of England in the period; should be spoken of much often as the white English composer Edward Elgar. That situation is from another period in time, I am more concerned in the musicians of the late Twentieth and Twenty-first centuries who (as I say) have been largely forgotten about.

When Black people from the Caribbean arrived on the Empire Windrush in Tilbury 1948, they bought to this country the music of their homelands in the Caribbean.

The Music of Caribbean folk song, Calypso and later on Ska, Bluebeat, and Reggae was a colourful kaleidoscope of music expression that this country had never experienced before. The music of the Caribbean was happy and joyful, a much needed tonic from the ravishes of the Second World War.

The mass appeal of a Black musician becoming a millionaire from his own music was a lot significantly less than it is today. Black British musicians in the early part of the 1950’s to the early 1970’s were mainly performing to their own communities. The Black musician in the United Kingdom was not marketed as a commodity product for the general public. This country mirrored the civil rights period as in America, where Black people were regarded as second class citizens below the white population.