The Music is Black. Part 3: 1995 - And Beyond

KAYLEE GOLDING: New technology, new sounds, and new ways of being heard.

DR MONIQUE CHARLES: They were building a scene and building an economy and it was on their own terms.

KAYLEE: Creating UK Garage, Jungle, Drum & Bass and Grime… This generation had their own experience and something new to say. By the 1990s, black British music was changing fast.

TITLE: PART 3: 1995 … & BEYOND

PROF MYKAELL RILEY: So when we get to the 90s, we have technology that says you can now sample the past, you can go back. So what do they do? They sample their history. They’re going back into Reggae, back into Dub.

LINETT KAMALA: So they would play the music at almost twice the tempo. And then this music became known as Jungle music.

MONIQUE: Jungle has heavy bass lines. It has a lot of fast percussion but the bassline is slow, so it allows you to still follow the bassline. So you can still dance to it.

KAYLEE: Jungle which was followed by Drum & Bass was closely linked to the club culture that was exploding in the UK.

MONIQUE: One of the pioneers of that particular technique is an artist known as Goldie.

KAYLEE: The MOBO Awards were launched in 1996 celebrating excellence in black music, with Goldie picking up the award for Best Album in its first year.

By the late 1990s, UK Garage emerged as a new sound and a new scene.

MONIQUE: It has elements of EDM - electronic dance music - but it has soulful vocals. It’s very, very melodic. It’s designed to be danced to.

KAYLEE: Artists like Craig David and Ms Dynamite brought tunes from the clubs to the charts. But for some the glamorous UK Garage scene just didn’t reflect everyday life. A raw new sound began to emerge. Grime.

MONIQUE: They want to talk about what their reality is. The hardships that they experience. The social realities of what they might see their parents going through. This is my end. This is where I’m from.

KAYLEE: In the early 2000s it was So Solid Crew that transitioned from UK Garage and laid the foundations for Grime.

MYKAELL: What’s important about So Solid…it set a benchmark that says “Be who you want to be, say what want to say, don’t wait for the industry to recognise and support what you’re saying.”

KAYLEE: Their track “21 Seconds” actually got to Number 1 in the charts, but this was not the typical experience of Grime artists. Producers embraced a so-called DIY or Do it Yourself approach.

LINETT: Technology had become more accessible. People were able to start using software and experimenting with sampling. It was a lot cheaper, so people could literally create music in their own bedrooms.

KAYLEE: As well as producing music, people needed to find a way to get it heard. And one way was unlicensed, so-called “pirate”, radio stations.

LINETT: Pirate radio stations were really popular and important because you wouldn’t hear this youth-driven music on the regular radio stations. So people were setting up their own radio stations in their own blocks of flats. You could literally hear this coming through the windows of people’s homes, bedrooms, as you’re walking through an estate, you know, block of flats.

KAYLEE: Along with the airwaves there was the world wide web.

MONIQUE: Grime was one of the genres that came up alongside the internet.

LINETT: People could create their own music videos very cheaply.

MONIQUE: It’s the ability to upload that on this newly found internet that enables the culture and the scene to kind of spread.

LINETT: It really was a way of people becoming quite entrepreneurial, you know, they became their own managers, their own bosses.

KAYLEE: Business minded people with passion for the music set up their own online platforms.

LINETT: So entrepreneurs, like Jamal Edwards with his SBTV… It was a complete game changer.

MONIQUE: Channels like Channel U, Link Up TV and Grime Daily were really important because again, they created a different kind of space. Different to pirate radio, but an important space, where you could visually see people that are making Grime music.

LINETT: For the first time, black British culture was being beamed across the world on a scale never before.

KAYLEE: By the 2010s, the latest wave of black British musicians - artists like Roadside G’s, Kano, and Skepta - were creating a huge fanbase.

MYKAELL: It was: “We’re not waiting for the industry. We can do this on our terms.”

MONIQUE: It got to the point where they got so big, it was undeniable, and even the record industry wanted to have a piece of the pie.

KAYLEE: The Glastonbury Festival is the biggest live pop music event in the UK. Black British artists had made appearances before but had never been the star of the show…until Stormzy appeared as the headline act in 2019.

LINETT: It was a big moment, particularly for what was known as the Grime music scene. I’d never seen anything like that. For the first time, I think people felt it was much more representational.

MONIQUE: If we think about black music and the spaces that it has been permitted to enter, It has largely been pushed to the side continually…and then eventually taking centre stage.

LINETT: That moment was a very…iconic, I would say. Important moment. With Grime music and why it has such a lasting appeal, it feels like it’s a way that people can really truly express themselves and talk about their experiences. I would say it’s current poetry, current modern day Shakespeare shall we say. You know, to me, that’s what it is!

KAYLEE: And that staying power is demonstrated by Dave, who first appeared as a 16- year-old freestyle rapper on YouTube in 2015. Within ten years he’d had three Number 1 albums.

MONIQUE: When it comes to black British music, a lot of it has been underground. But Grime was the genre that was able to cross over into the mainstream, and stay in the mainstream.

KAYLEE: We’ve followed the journey of black music in Britain for more than 100 years, but what lies ahead?

MONIQUE: I see the future of black British music as ever evolving, very much like the black British identity.

KEVIN LE GENDRE: I think the artists will go telling new stories as they see fit, according to their experience and the experience of the people around them.

LINETT: It’s authentic - it’s the real deal!

MYKAELL: Black musicians will continue to be creative - because they have to. It’s not going to be easy. But we’re not going anywhere!