Bass Culture.
Bass Culture is a multicomponent output bringing together an exhibition, documentary film, online resource and book chapter with the aim of defining black British music and exploring its historical and cultural significance over six decades. It is the first large-scale study of the history and impact of Jamaican-influenced music in the UK. Riley won AHRC funding for the project and acted as P-I. See Portfolio Booklet for documentation of research dimensions.
- Submitting institution
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The University of Westminster
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- qqvqz
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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- Location
- Bass Culture 70/50 exhibition, Ambika P3, London, October 22–November 25, 2018; Bass Culture, a documentary film, premiered at Ambika P3, as part of Bass Culture 70/50 followed by a public screening at Regent Street Cinema. Further details in portfolio.
- Brief description of type
- Other: Multicomponent
- Open access status
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- Month
- -
- Year
- 2014
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- Bass Culture is a multidisciplinary project that developed a multi-layered methodology involving wide-ranging stakeholders and co-researchers. Riley engaged a very large number of organisations, musicians and communities, and drew on his industry track record and profile to conduct in-depth interviews providing the primary material for the online resource and other output components. Archival content generated include more than 200 images, over 70 in-depth filmed interviews to date, as well as performances and documentation. The documentary film was produced with a youth media organisation using archival and original content.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- As P-I for the AHRC project Bass Culture (£533,032), Riley’s research involves locating, capturing and preserving memories, experiences and ephemera from three generations of musicians, music industry participants and audience members. The associated communities and networks have played a key role in transforming Britain into a multicultural society, yet their contributions have previously remained absent from the country’s cultural institutions. The output components draw on original interviews, new and archival imagery to inform both a large- scale multimedia, interdisciplinary exhibition at Ambika P3 (Bass Culture 70/50, 2018), and a collaboratively produced documentary film (Bass Culture, 2018). Included are a wide range of oral testimonies and previously unseen images (representing over 50 years of London-based content) that explore and make manifest reference points connecting the influence of British sound-system culture to modern and contemporary music, fashion and cultural forms today. Riley’s book chapter (2014) draws on his experiences as a black British musician of Jamaican heritage to contextualise the origins and emergence of black British music in the 1970s and 1980s against the socio-political backdrop of the era.
Riley devised a methodology for working together with wide-ranging collaborators to break down and classify areas of interest, without disenfranchising the participants or co-researchers. In creating the online resource, the project’s researchers were able to apply key categories that helped guide navigation of the complex layers of material, cultural and economic activity underpinning key values that were shared within the community, while mapping the contribution for academia. The Bass Culture project successfully united academics, museums and the African Caribbean community in a series of projects that helped make visible the Jamaican contribution to British popular music and culture and lay the basis for popular music teaching that more accurately reflects that influence. See also impact case study.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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