“The Music is Black” embarks on a sweeping, ambitious tour through the history of Black British music, tracing the emergence of eight unique genres created and developed in Britain: lovers rock, Brit funk, 2 Tone, trip-hop, jungle, drum and bass, U.K. garage and grime. In addition to analyzing their cultural importance and the relationships among certain subcultures, the exhibition fleshes out the roots of these sounds in Jamaican sound system culture, jazz and traditional West African music.
