Black history and culture are hugely influential in the music world, and earlier this year, one of the biggest celebrations of black music came to Sheffield.
Music has begun to evolve quickly and dramatically over the last 100 years or so, and this can likely be put down to growing intermingling and acceptance between cultures. Modern music, especially some of the more popular genres, are especially affected by, and often derived from culturally black music, particularly African American and Afro-Caribbean music. Genres like jazz, rock, soul, and RnB are probably the most well-known and obvious examples of how popular traditionally black music has become throughout the last century.
To complement this, the last 100 years has seen a growing influx of popular and well-respected black musicians from lots of cultures, nationalities, and traditional music practices. Afro-Caribbean influence led to genres like ska and reggae, with famous artists and bands like Bob Marley and AmaZulu amongst their ranks. Meanwhile the unique culture created by black Americans lead to the rise of the extremely popular jazz, hip-hop and RnB genres, with notable examples like Louis Armstrong, Aretha Franklin and many, many others.
For the last 26 years The MOBOs (Music of Black Origin awards) have been Britain’s biggest annual celebration of black music, and this year, the event came north to Sheffield.
The Utilita Arena in Sheffield played host to the 26th Music of Black Origin award ceremony back in February. While the awards do not exclusively celebrate British musicians, they are based and hosted in Britain and some of the most prolific winners across the last 10 years have included London-based grime artist Stormzy. To give us a more local connection, the awards have also been hosted four times by Leeds born singer Mel B, and Sunderland’s Emeli Sandé has been a prolific winner of MOBO awards in the past. Also, while not specifically music related, Sheffield’s Jessica Ennis-Hill won a ‘paving the way’ award at February’s MOBO ceremony. Next year’s MOBO awards will be hosted in Newcastle, perhaps more great northern black musicians will receive some recognition.
Black history is a huge part of music and is key to understanding where different styles and techniques in music come from. Being a huge fan of jazz and swing music myself, I have often been fascinated by the very multicultural origins of the last 100 years or so of musical evolution, and traditionally black music and cultures are invaluable in the formation of most of the music styles we listen to today, including a large chunk of modern day pop-music. It is certainly worth continuing to celebrate the contributions that black music and musicians have made to the evolution of music thus far, and as music continues to evolve we must always remember how the mixing and intermingling of cultures has allowed this to happen.
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