IN JANUARY this year, a blue plaque was installed in Greenwich, South London, commemorating John Blanke. A trumpeter in the Tudor courts of Henry VII and Henry VIII, Blanke is the first black Briton for whom there is both an image and documentation.

It’s Blanke who will provide the starting point for a landmark exhibition exploring the history of black British music.

“The project will map the long history of African and Caribbean contributions to British popular music,” says Mykaell Riley, the driving force behind the exhibition. “Our timeline will kick off with John Blanke in the early 1500s and will end with contemporary contributions.”

Riley is one of the original members of UK reggae group Steel Pulse, and is now a senior lecturer at the University of Westminster and director of the Black Music Research Unit.

They have partnered with the British Library for the new initiative, and the team’s research will culminate in an exhibition at the library in the Summer of 2024.  The British Library is home to a vast archive of music (more than seven million sound recordings on over 40 different formats) and music-related literature, and it’s this resource that will help populate the survey.

Riley and Steel Pulse were key figures in the British anti-racist movement, Rock Against Racism, in the 1970s. The band took part in the legendary Rock Against Racism concert in Victoria Park, East London in 1978, where 100,000 people saw them perform alongside The Clash and the Tom Robinson Band. It’s these threads of black music involvement in the UK’s political and social culture that Riley continues to work with today.

The research won’t just highlight the importance of black British music in contemporary culture, it will stretch back over 500 years.  And this is a story that needs telling.

While there have been a number of similar, smaller projects in the past, there hasn’t yet been anything that, for example, linked 18th-century composer and abolitionist Ignatius Sancho with nu-jazz progenitor Shabaka Hutchings, late 19th-century composer Samuel Taylor-Coleridge with the early days of Hackney’s Junglist scene, or music hall pianist Winifred Atwell with contemporary classical composer Errollyn Wallen.

And the history of black music in Britain is dogged with systemic rights and race abuses.

2021’s Being Black In the UK Music Industry report found that 73 per cent of professional black musicians and producers had experienced racism in the music business.

When the document was published, Charisse Beaumont, CEO of the Black Lives In Music organisation behind the study, said “the data clearly shows change is needed across the entire music ecosystem, from grassroots education all the way up to record labels. I hope this report provokes change in the way we do our music business, which has greatly profited from black talent.”

There’s still much to be achieved, but the Black Music Research Unit and the British Library’s new Black British Music project are a welcome move in the right direction.