Take a look at these insightful and inspiring titles all about Black British Music as part of our celebration of Black History Month.
All free to borrow with a library card.
Want more suggestions? Browse our recommendations.
Black British Music: The Book of The British Library Exhibition
Paul Bradshaw
The story of Black British music is a five-hundred-year journey from the court of King Henry VIII to the ‘Ends’ of South London; from Africa to the Caribbean to the UK and back; from subterranean shebeens and church halls to royal command performances and sold-out stadiums; and from outsider influence to domestic chart domination. It is a story that grapples with the slave trade, the prejudice of unwelcoming institutions and the bias of ignorance while ultimately celebrating the creativity and perseverance of the pioneers and today’s digital age innovators.
Published alongside the major British Library exhibition, Beyond the Bassline is a landmark volume of essays, features and interviews which traces a new timeline underpinned by the Black artists and musicians who, over centuries, have shaped Britain’s unique and globally significant musical culture.
To Be Young, Gifted and Black
Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason
When Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason’s eldest daughter, Isata, made her solo debut at the BBC Proms in 2023, she could not have been prouder. Watching years of hard work transform into a transcendent performance was profoundly moving, both as music-lover and parent.
All fractured when her younger daughter turned to her in tears a few days later, having read online abuse about her sister. Isata, it was declared, did not deserve to be there. How do you prepare your child for the fact that no matter their talent, technique or dedication, they will be told they do not belong?
Through conversations with her extraordinarily gifted family, Kanneh-Mason explores what it’s like to come of age in these turbulent times, when Black artistic self-expression is so often met with disparagement and abuse online – and offers a hopeful, powerful way through.
Avoidance, Drugs, Heartbreak and Dogs
Jordan Stephens
Love is a gift, isn’t it? From our early childhood years to growing up and pairing off, it’s a feeling we chase knowing we’re better off with it. But what if love is claustrophobic and conflicting? And what if at the same time we’re chasing addictions to drugs, drink, sex and chaos?
Diagnosed twice with ADHD, Jordan Stephens found his teens and twenties a whirl of career success and nurturing friendships but also a brutal pattern of self-harm, hedonism, destructive coping mechanisms and heartbreak. When he tried to live up to his own damaged expectations and his world exploded, he stepped away from his previous existence completely and allowed himself to explore the pain he’d repressed his entire life.
“Essential reading for men of all ages.” – Caleb Femi
Black by Design: A 2-Tone Memoir
Pauline Black
Born in 1953 to Anglo-Jewish/Nigerian parents, Pauline Black was subsequently adopted by a white, working class family in Romford. Never quite at home there, she escaped her small town background and discovered a different way of life – making music.
Lead singer for platinum-selling band The Selecter, Pauline Black was the Queen of British Ska. The only woman in a movement dominated by men, she toured with The Specials, Madness, Dexy’s Midnight Runners when they were at the top of the charts – and, sometimes, on their worst behaviour.
From childhood to fame, from singing to acting and broadcasting, from adoption to her recent search for her birth parents, Black By Design is a funny and enlightening story of music, race, family and roots.
Rebel With a Cause: Roots, Records and Revolutions
Darcus Beese
The must-read memoir from Darcus Beese – the first black president of Island Records and one of the greatest A&Rs of his generation. From growing up as a teenager on the streets of West London to running one of the biggest record labels in the world in New York – this is a truly remarkable rags to riches tale.
Rebel With a Cause is the story of how a teenage apprentice hairdresser from Fulham worked his way up from teaboy to head one of the UK’s biggest record labels, and nurturing some of the greatest artists of the twenty-first century – from Amy Winehouse to U2. But this is also the story of a young man raised in musically fertile and politically febrile times. His activist parents Darcus Howe and Barbara Beese were tireless campaigners for racial equality at a time when racism was rife, not only on the streets, in schools and on the terraces, but also in the highest institutions of power.
The Voice: 40 Years of Black British Lives
The Voice, Forword by Sir Lenny Henry
Launched at the 1982 Notting Hill Carnival, The Voice newspaper captured and addressed a generation figuring out what it meant to be Black and British. Written for and by Black people, the newspaper shone a light on systematic injustices as well as celebrating Black Britain’s success stories.
From hard hitting news reports covering the murder of Stephen Lawrence to championing the likes of Sir Lewis Hamilton and Idris Elba, The Voice also documented everyday life in the community.
Since its small beginnings in Hackney, The Voice has also become a fantastic training ground for prominent journalists and figures including former politician Trevor Phillips, broadcaster Rageh Omaar and writer Afua Hirsch. Today, The Voice is Britain’s longest running and only Black newspaper.
Too Much Too Young: The 2 Tones Record Story: Rude Boys, Racism and The Soundtrack of a Generation
Daniel Rachel
In 1979, record label 2 Tone exploded into the national consciousness and a youth movement was born.
2 Tone was black and white: a multi-racial force of British and Caribbean Island musicians singing about social issues, racism, class and gender struggles. The idea was masterminded by a middle-class art student raised in the church, Jerry Dammers. Borrowing £700 to start the label, Dammers quickly signed Madness, The Beat and The Bodysnatchers. But it wasn’t long before infighting amongst the bands and the pressures of running a label caused 2 Tone to bow to an inevitable weight of expectation.
Told in three parts, Too Much Too Young is the definitive story of a label that for a brief, bright burning moment, shaped British culture.
Sounds Like London: 100 Years of Black Music in The Capital
Lloyd Bradley
For as long as people have been migrating to London, so has their music.
Black music has been part of London’s landscape since the First World War, when the Southern Syncopated Orchestra brought jazz to the capital. Following the wave of Commonwealth immigration, its sounds and styles took up residence to become the foundation of the city’s youth culture.
Sounds Like London tells the story of the music and the larger-than-life characters making it, journeying from Soho jazz clubs to Brixton blues parties to King’s Cross warehouse raves to the streets of Notting Hill – and onto sound systems everywhere.
Mister Good Times
Norman Jay
The story of a black kid growing up in a (largely white) working class world; of vivid, often violent experiences on the football terraces; of the emerging club scene growing out of a melting pot of styles, looks and influences; of how Jay, with his contemporaries, took the music of Black America, gave it a distinctly London twist, and used the marriage of styles to forge hugely successful career as a trailblazing DJ and broadcaster, becoming an inspiration to a whole generation of dance music fans, black and white, without ever compromising his integrity or credibility.
All Things Remembered
Goldie
The story of the man born Clifford J. Price — jungle’s most streetwise ambassador who went on to collect an MBE from Buckingham Palace. As one of Britain’s most influential DJs, producers and record-label owners, Goldie’s contribution to the UK rave scene in the 1990s with Metalheadz provided the blueprint for dubstep and grime.
Here is the memoir of an extraordinary life, an explosive story of abuse, revenge, graffiti, breakdancing, gold teeth, sawn-off shotguns, car crashes, hot yoga, absent fatherhood and redemption through reality TV – all told in Goldie’s unmistakeable, charismatic voice.
Stick To My Roots
Tippa Irie
Spanning an impressive 40+ year career in the music industry, Stick To My Roots charts Tippa Irie’s incredible story – from his trailblazing beginnings in Saxon Sound International to the Grammy Award-nominated “Hey Mama” with the Black Eyed Peas.
Titled after his 2010 hit single, this autobiography moves from the first sign of talent in Irie as a child in Brixton, South London and family members encouraging him to enter local talent competitions, to making his first record, connecting to his roots home in Jamaica as well as the wider reggae legacy across the Caribbean and the African continent and becoming the powerhouse and Reggae-scene legend he is now.
It is a memoir full of dreams, music and hope, but also the deep traumas and tribulations that Tippa experienced throughout his life.
Black Tudors: The Untold Story
Miranda Kaufmann
A black porter whips a white Englishman in a Gloucestershire manor house. A Moroccan woman is baptised in a London church. A Mauritanian diver is dispatched to salvage lost treasures from the Mary Rose. From long-forgotten records emerge the remarkable stories of Africans who lived free in Tudor England. They were present at some of the most defining moments of the age. They were christened, married and buried by the Church. They were paid wages like any other Tudors. Includes tales of renowned but rarely covered musician John Blanke.
The untold stories of the Black Tudors, dazzlingly brought to life by Kaufmann, will transform how we see this most intriguing period of history.
Black Victorians: Hidden in History
Keshia Nicole Abraham
Beyond the narrow, white, patrician vision of Victorian Britain traditionally advanced in our textbooks, there always existed another, more diverse Britain, populated by people of colour marking achievements both ordinary and extraordinary.
In this deeply researched and dynamic history, Woolf and Abraham reach into the archives to recentre our attention on marginalised Black Victorians, from leading medic George Rice to political agitator William Cuffay to abolitionists Henry ‘Box’ Brown and Sarah Parker Remond; from pre-Raphaelite muse Fanny Eaton to renowned composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. While acknowledging the paradoxes of Victorian views of race, Black Victorians demonstrates, with storytelling verve and a liberatory impulse, how Black people were visible, present and influential – not temporary presences but established and firmly rooted in British life.
There and Black Again
Don Letts
Don Letts – filmmaker, musician, DJ, broadcaster, social commentator, husband and father – has always defied conformity. A British-born son of Windrush parents, he seamlessly pivoted between London’s punk and reggae scenes – earning his reputation as the ‘Rebel Dread’.
In this singular autobiography, Don Letts looks back on his exceptional life, which has seen him befriend Bob Marley after sneaking into his hotel, join The Clash’s White Riot tour as manager of The Slits and become one of the UK’s most highly regarded video directors just as the MTV boom hit.
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