| What
happens when you get a group of 15-17 year olds to
research a hidden history of Reggae Dancehall Culture
in London during the 1970s and 1980s? Nu-Beyond ran
a summer project in which they gave 10 young people
the opportunity to find out about their past in a
local context. The young people received training
at Goldsmiths College, University Of London, in research
methods, interviewing techniques, documentary script
writing and film making techniques. For the documentary
and the other cultural artefacts they produced, they
interviewed 32 people, most of whom were artists on
reggae sound systems during this era. They then used
this information along with research from secondary
sources to create a ground breaking documentary, CD
rom and website.
Click
to view project's CD Rom
The research project
is funded by The Heritage Lottery Fund and raises
awareness of the importance of the Reggae-dancehall
scene in the late 1970s to late 1980s and its role
in shaping the cultural practices of Caribbean migrants
and their subsequent generations. It also details
how the Reggae scene
has had a significant, yet seldomly acknowledged,
influence on contemporary popular culture. It focuses
on personal testimonies, photographic evidence, music,
fashion, and the cultural politics of the time, to
locate its worth to our contemporary national heritage.
The research details how particular black identities
in Britain were developed and expressed through the
utilisation of Creolised languages in an urban context,
and how these languages, when performed in the Reggae-dancehall,
presented more realistic accounts of the experiences
of the black or minority ethnic communities in post
war Britain.
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