TY - JOUR
T1 - Sound system culture
T2 - Place, space and identity in the United Kingdom, 1960-1989
AU - Ward, Paul
N1 - Funding Information:
This essay could not have been written without the Sound System Culture project led by Mandeep Samra, who brought everything together to such good effect. I would like to thank the peer reviewers of the essay and Ben Kyneswood. I’m also grateful to Donald Cumming, Milton Brown, Liz Pente and Shabina Aslam and all those involved with Imagine: Connecting Communities Through Research (Economic and Social Research Council grant numbers ES/K002686/1 and ES/K002686/2).
Funding Information:
Paul Ward ([email protected]) has just been appointed professor of Public History and Community Heritage at Edge Hill University, after eighteen years at the University of Huddersfield. His research focuses on national identities in the United Kingdom and he uses community-based research to explore how Britons have identified themselves. He is author of four books including Britishness since 1870 (2004). His recent publications include ‘Let’s change History! Community histories and the co-production of historical knowledge,’ in Katie Pickles et al. (eds), History Making a Difference: New Approaches from Aotearoa (2017). He is currently co-editing a book called Co-Producing Research: A Community Development Approach (Policy Press), as part of the Imagine: Connecting Communities Through Research project funded by the ESRC.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Universidad del Pais Vasco. All rights reserved.
Copyright:
Copyright 2018 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2018/6/18
Y1 - 2018/6/18
N2 - By exploring the experience of the industrial town of Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, where the West Indian population contributed to sound system and reggae culture out of proportion to its size, it can be shown that sound system culture developed differently in different urban contexts in Britain in the late twentieth century. The essay uses more than thirty oral history interviews of people who ran sound systems or were audiences for them. They were collected by the Sound System Culture project initiated by Let’s Go Yorkshire, which focuses on aspects of local cultural heritage hidden from and unrecorded by mainstream history. Their project provides an opportunity to explore questions of identity in relation to sound systems, reggae and urban Britain with a focus on a specific place and its configurations of space. The essay examines the importance of the location of a West Indian club in the town centre, enabling the African-Caribbean population to visibly and aurally contribute to the Huddersfield’s sense of its own identity.
AB - By exploring the experience of the industrial town of Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, where the West Indian population contributed to sound system and reggae culture out of proportion to its size, it can be shown that sound system culture developed differently in different urban contexts in Britain in the late twentieth century. The essay uses more than thirty oral history interviews of people who ran sound systems or were audiences for them. They were collected by the Sound System Culture project initiated by Let’s Go Yorkshire, which focuses on aspects of local cultural heritage hidden from and unrecorded by mainstream history. Their project provides an opportunity to explore questions of identity in relation to sound systems, reggae and urban Britain with a focus on a specific place and its configurations of space. The essay examines the importance of the location of a West Indian club in the town centre, enabling the African-Caribbean population to visibly and aurally contribute to the Huddersfield’s sense of its own identity.
KW - Reggae
KW - sound systems
KW - immigration
KW - Black British history
KW - Black british history
KW - Immigration
KW - Sound systems
UR - http://www.ehu.eus/ojs/index.php/HC/index
U2 - 10.1387/hc.18161
DO - 10.1387/hc.18161
M3 - Article (journal)
SN - 1130-2402
VL - 57
SP - 349
EP - 376
JO - Historia Contemporánea
JF - Historia Contemporánea
IS - 57
ER -
