Jeffrey Boakye - Musical Truth: A Musical History of Modern Black Britain in 28 Songs

From early on in all our lives, we learn history. Our own history, and the history of the world around us. Sometimes its in a classroom, sometimes from the TV, or it might be from your parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles who wont stop telling you about what it was like when they were young, with phrases like I remember the time when

But these stories are important. They can show us what happened in the past, help us work out what life was like before we were born, and, if we pay enough attention, they can even help us understand what might happen in the future.

You might have learned about the Victorians, the Romans, the Egyptians who knows. But what about the untold stories? What about the people who dont end up in textbooks and exam papers?

This book is going to open up a few of these stories and give you a few more pieces of the puzzle. Its going to take us on a journey through black British history, exploring how black culture has developed over time and influenced British society along the way, and were going to do this through a selection of songs. Why songs? Because music is powerful. Music is life. Music can carry the stories of history like a message in a bottle.

And it can also do three very important things.

Music can be a celebration.

Music can be a way of talking about oppression.

Music can be a type of resistance.

For me personally, music has done all of this and much, much more. Ever since I was a child, I have loved exploring worlds outside of my home through songs and lyrics. Even before I owned any music of my own, I would listen to the radio or songs that were being played at parties and lose myself in sounds and rhythm. Music has always had a powerful impact on my life. Reggae and soul could calm me down while hiphop and dancehall could make my heart start racing. I would dance for hours with my siblings and cousins, lost in the joy that music can bring. Thats the power of music.

When I was a kid, I remember playing my dads old records on his huge stereo system, being introduced to funk, disco, jazz and Ghanaian highlife. I remember recording songs off the radio on my tape deck with my two older sisters, getting excited to hear the latest hits from our local station. I remember getting my first Walkman cassette player and listening to music on my own massive headphones, losing myself in the sounds of American hiphop, Jamaican dancehall and all sorts of sounds from the UK. I remember writing down song lyrics that I didnt even understand and reciting them to my friends in the playground. My whole life has beaten to the pulse of black music, and Im telling you right now: we can learn a lot by looking at the world through a musical lens.

In this book, well explore songs from the global black community that do all of these things, sometimes all at once. Well calypso through the 1940s and see reggae bounce its way into the 1980s. Well catch soulful grooves in the 1990s and rap our way into the new millennium. Well see UK garage step up the tempo on the dancefloor and eventually join grime on the rooftops of east London, in the early 2000s.

Get ready to travel the whole world on the sounds of the past and keep it moving right up to the present. Well meet groundbreaking musicians whose songs have changed the world, and then well see one of the biggest black British superstars kicking up a storm(zy) in the here and now. Phew.

Welcome to Musical Truth: A Musical History of Modern Black Britain in 28 Songs.

You ready? Lets go.

Now, before we really get going, well need to understand what is meant by something called the British Empire.

Its not that difficult. An empire is basically a collection of places that are owned and controlled, or colonised, by one powerful country. Not long ago, Britain had a huge empire that spread all over the world. It was so huge that people used to say, The sun never sets on the British Empire. This is just a clever way of saying that the empire included so many countries across so many time zones, it was always daytime somewhere in a British-controlled country.

The British Empire was a system that allowed a very small country, Britain, to rule over huge chunks of the globe. Another name for it is British imperialism, and imperialism is great if you want to be in charge of everything (and dont really care about the people who were there before you). Have you ever wondered how and why English became one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, despite England being just one patch of a tiny island? Its because English is the language of the British Empire. If, lets say, France had built an empire that was as powerful as Britains, then on parlerait tous franais maintenant (wed all be speaking French right now).

At one point, just before the First World War, the British Empire controlled more than 410 million people across huge parts of Europe, America, Australia, Asia and Africa. This was nearly a quarter of everyone on the planet at the time. Thats major. If you controlled nearly a quarter of the kids at your school right now, youd probably be as powerful as the headteacher.