Kevin Le Gendre

• I WRITE to commend Angela Cobbinah for her extensive review of Kevin Le Gendre’s excellent Don’t Stop The Carnival: Black Music In Britain Volume 1 book, (Echoes of the past, October 10).

This British Black Music Month recommended book indeed deserves mainstream notice, as it tells a British black music history that pre-dates the Windrush era by a couple of millennia!

Embedded within Le Gendre’s telling of that history, is a very important component, which Cobbinah describes as a “wider sociological and political perspective that is informed by the seismic events of slavery, colonialism and migration”.

I’m glad to see the author take the history back to the 43AD Roman invasion of these islands, which then became Rome’s Britannia colonial outpost.

Similarly in my History Of Black Music In Britain presentations, I posit the beginning of black music here to be this period. I’m also glad to read that the author is working on the second volume, as I’m sure are many fans of black music and history.

KWAKU
BritishBlackMusic.com / Black Music Congress (BBM/BMC)
PO Box 14092, NW10 1WL
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