Matt arrived at 1:30 for our trip to town. I had booked two tickets to see ‘Beyond the Baseline – 500 years of Black British Music’, an exhibition at the British Library. Naturally the library didn’t have much on the first 3 hundred years with the limited number of black people in the UK up until the 20th Century, but they did demonstrate that the few here had been absolute stars in their time.
Pre-war the main outlet for black musicians came with the popularity of jazz in the cosmolitan heartland of Soho. After the war with numbers increasing their influence on mainstream culture increased. Names like Winifred Attwell, Cleo Lane and Shirley Bassey became television stars. The impact on youth culture occurred in the seventies with the arrival of reggae and ska and labels like Island Records set up to exploited the excitement that these musical forms produced.
By the 80’s black artists regularly performed on TOTP and had hit records. Notting Hill Carnival while up north Northern Soul was in full swing and made a huge impact on the clubs.
The latter part of the exhibition dedicated to more recent musical styles, such as Jungle, Garage and Rap. The final room showed a mixture of film and music displayed on three walls and the ceiling by one artist.
I found the exhibition interesting because it reminded me of my youth, but also whole parts of the musical heritage that I have missed because of my background.
After the exhibition we visited the Treasury for a little which has a fantastic selection of documents from all over the world and really needs a couple of hours to take in.
For our next stop we stayed in the Kings Cross area and walked up to Dishoom in Coal Drop Yard. Fortunately we arrived at 5 pm and we walked straight in without a queue. I choose badly a mushroom dish and greens, still tasty but not well balanced. Matt raved about his chicken curry.
From here we walked over to Kingly Street to watch some blues at the Aint Nothing But bar. A jammed pub had a very small stage at one end, a long bar and lots of people. After buying our drinks we found a table outside with seats. The table sloped and need a newspaper under our glasses to stop them sliding down the table. A young Irish guy joined our table and looked nervous. It didn’t take him long to start talking, he came from Derry and had only just arrived in the UK. He had agreed to meet a female work colleague for a first date. Never having seen her in the flesh accounted for his nervousness. Soon a woman in her 30s sat down, she came from Texas, was travelling one her own and again started chatting. She had already visited a couple of blues places in London that I hadn’t heard of (which is not surprising). All four of us telling stories when the Irishman stood up another woman in her 30s sat down and became part of the group. She had worked for Renault’s Formula 1 team as a performance engineer. After awhile the Irish guy found his date and the girls departed to find some much younger action than we offered.
At this point all around us people stood talking and drinking and we had 3 seats available. Suddenly 3 girls in their late teens and early 20’s sat with Matt and I. Unbelievably they started talking to us. Two of them worked as carers and the other in hospitality. All from Essex, they were on a badly organised night out to celebrate the upcoming 19th birthday of the youngest. I bought them a drink and then the music started.
We walked into the bar which again didn’t offer much room to move, but we found a perch. The excellent band played obscure blues numbers very well. A traditional line up drums, bass, guitar and harmonica/sax kept a great rhythm accompanied by tricky guitar work and the inevitable harmonica. Unfortunately the harmonica player didn’t use the sax as much as I would have liked.
We left and had great connections back to Pinner.