Gay musicians in Black churches have always held a peculiar status within Black culture and the church.
Halloween playlist
Stay spooked! This is the playlist for the Is Black Music Halloween special.
Nigerian folk rock playlist
Tune in to our show on Nigerian folk rock, and check out the playlist.
Segun Adetunji and the Dulcis Ensemble
Enter the Dulcis Ensemble: a collective of twenty young African musicians from Lagos, Nigeria who chose to take the path of African classical music.
Black women gospel composers
Black women are the backbone, torso and soul of the church. Yet they are elbowed out of many of its leading roles. So we shouldn’t be surprised that they are not credited much as song writers.
Me and Melvin Van Peebles
On meeting Melvin Van Peebles – writer, musician and the godfather of soul cinema.
ShINRI and me
ShNRI’s music was warm and challenging . Inviting and fierce, full of energy and unapologetically loving. Her vocal delivery foreign, unbritish and un-black American. Not European or African in a familiar way. Unknown to me.
Accordion Crimes
Mardi Gras in New Orleans was on February 16 this year, and Is Black Music celebrated with a slamming accordion playlist featuring zydeco musicians past and present. The accordion is one of the most awesome instruments ever invented.
A Love Letter to Labi
The songs he played that night were so powerful and poignant, lyrically and compositionally. And hooks! The brotha had melodic hooks coming out of every crevice of his body.
Avant garde Black women
As we remember to forget those Black avant garde women, the ones overlooked by us men who couldn't deal… let us turn back now and listen to their music. Their movement up and down the pathway of our lost minds.
Lockdown 3 part special
These lockdown radio shows are a fascinating voyeuristic peek into the artist’s private and intimate space. In most instances there is only a cell phone camera present to bear witness to the lone musician’s personal testimony.
Farewell Danny Ray Thompson
Danny would come through town and always be patient and gracious with us. He knew we weren’t ready and didn’t understand yet. But he seemed to see something in us, and he and the Arkestra encouraged us to hang out.
The crepuscular vision of the Chi-Lites
This broadcast makes an unlikely pairing of the Chi-lites music with the overlooked early 20th Century Italian art movement known as crepuscular poetry.
They Dance In The Dark
This performance explores that area in our lives which is unacknowledged. Perhaps we are so in denial that we don’t recognise it ourselves. That area between man and woman. African and Asian. Day and night. Good and bad. Wrong and right. Darkness and light.
Billy Harper
We will walk together in Billy Harper-land. There are those who quietly walk in the shadow of celebrity and fashion. None the less bright does their star glow. Indeed it’s ever the brighter for being in the dark.
Lady Macbeth
Lady Macbeth is a Black film. They won’t tell you that. Maybe they thought you knew. Perhaps they thought you’d find out once it was out.
My Love Divine Degree
Cody takes his quirky arty concept thang to the bridge. He really owns his otherness with tracks like This Green Leaf and the Image Of Love. Indeed this whole album requires that you prepare for the unexpected, even on the second or third listen.
Silent 'race' films
From phantasmagoric images to social realism, we find an overflowing of creativity and imagination united to an irrepressible sense of spirit and talent.
The Black Sound exhibit
These are portraits of the aunts and uncles that represent the African and Caribbean cultural sound embodied in the UK, and we salute them.
Black Art Summer
This is not a beginner’s course in Black American culture. This exhibit advances beyond any other I have witnessed on the art and creativity of this here soul nation.