Library music: the Black Sound London exhibition

So yeah, I checked out the Black Sound London: the story of British black music exhibition at the Barbican in the City today. Yep. And ... here we go again: another exhibition about music, with all the (likely) flatness that that entails. 

You don't have to live in London to visit Black Sound London

It's a self-evidently important topic - 100 years of inspirational music made by black performers in the UK - but this rather squashed little exhibition tries to cover this huge subject with just a sprinkling of standard exhibition wares and - sadly - not much flare (all ware, no flare). So there were some exhibition posters (12 in all) glued onto OSB boards, five medium-sized display cabinets (yes, the dreaded display cabinets beloved by old school museums), three tiny display cabinets, and a mock-up (I think) of a soundsystem stack. Oh, and an exhibit of a flag loaned by the Mackabee soundsystem crew in Coventry. Housed in the Barbican's music library, the exhibition can almost be missed (it feels like it's on the way to somewhere else) and it just doesn't have enough space dedicated to it. On the one hand, the main "story" of the exhibition is ... OK, with its chronology of key developments. It's a primer. Nothing too detailed. Stuff like this: 

So sure, it's OK, and it's interesting (for example) to read that Melody Maker was launched as early as 1926. Or, to scroll forward to 1948, to learn (at least a snippet) about the important role of the Trinidadian producer Lord Woodbine in the early pre-Epstein Beatles:

And yes, these are info boards at an exhibition - it's not a full-on immersion via a book or a documentary. But nevertheless, this was a good 50% of the exhibition. A sort of well-meaning drive-through of the main developments - a story board. Elsewhere, it was stuff like grime merchandise, a few bits and pieces on soundsystems - including a sort of interesting map (see below), which was perhaps there to remind people that black music in the UK didn't just happen in London - a few album covers, and a documentary-type thing featuring Goldie and others (which I must admit I didn't bother watching/listening to via the headphones they had). Oh dear, I'm starting to feel like I'm doing down this eminently well-meaning exhibition. And it's true I only dedicated about 25 minutes of my precious time to a quick perusal of its contents. And it's also true - mea culpa - that I basically dislike exhibitions about music, even though er, I like music and er, I like exhibitions. Anyway, jump below the map and meet me in France for a quick wrap-up ...

... ah, nous voilà à nouveau! So, yes, la décision: despite my carping, Black Sound London is perfectly nice and worth a few minutes of your time if you should find yourself in the Barbican arts mega-complex (just head to the second floor for the library). But don't expect anything innovative or in-depth. I guess survey exhibitions of this kind are always a bit of a challenge - how to judge the ratio of generalist stuff versus the more specialised content? Compared, for instance, to Dan Hancox's Inner City Pressure the grime stuff in this exhibition feels almost tokenistic. And so does the reggae side of things, despite the exhibition being co-curated by Lloyd Bradley, whose Bass Culture is widely seen as a seminal work on reggae. But there you go. It's true I may be overly hostile to exhibitions on music. I've got form. I was sniffy about the Jerry Dammers show on 2 Tone in Coventry (Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, 2021), just as I was somewhat unimpressed by the Syd Shelton Rock Against Racism photo exhibition in Shoreditch (Autograph ABP gallery, 2015). And don't even get me started on the Use Hearing Protection show on Factory Records (Chelsea Space gallery, 2019). So in an effort to conclude with something more positive, I will say this: I rather liked the look of the Barbican library (it was my first time in there) and I'm already in the process of signing up. Yes, libraries rock. Evidently you don't need to be a resident of the City of London to become a member (just as well because about 17 people officially live in this weird medieval zone of London) and the library appears to have hundreds of "world cinema" DVDs just begging to be rented out at £1.50 per week. These days I'm undoubtedly in a dwindling band (a microscopic number?) of people who do anything as old-fashioned as renting a DVD from a library, but I say: fuck your Netflix and all who sail in her. Yep, this time tomorrow night I could be tucking into a box set of Béla Tarr. A Guy Called Gerald would approve. Not least because Voodoo Ray was a key inspiration for Werckmeister Harmonies. Possibly ...