Bass Culture Expo 70/50: UK’s largest ever Jamaican music exhibition highlights Windrush generation’s impact on Britain. This is a four-week exhibition exploring the impact of Jamaican and Jamaican-influenced music on British culture.

The exhibition is staged by Bass Culture Research, a three-year Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project set up to explore the impact of Jamaican music in the UK. The project made headlines last year after issuing The Grime Report, which led to the withdrawal of Form 696, a controversial risk assessment form criticised for being discriminatory and targeting genres such as grime.

While Jamaican music has been fundamental to the development of multicultural Britain, its influence has arguably never been recognised. Following recent moves to ramp up police stop and search powers, together with claims that Jamaican-influenced genres such as drill are fuelling gang wars, marginalisation and discrimination risks being on the rise again. Bass Culture 70/50 seeks to challenge these negative interpretations and rather recognise the impact of Jamaican culture on not only the musical canon but on British culture and identity itself.

Partners of the exhibition include the AHRC, Black Cultural Archives, British Library, SOAS, Goldsmiths University, Urbanimage and Camera Press.

Mykaell Riley, Principal Investigator and Director of the Bass Culture Music Unit at the University of Westminster, said “This is the story of the soundtrack to multiculturalism, a hidden history that is still impacting on new music.” All our online chanels are currently being updated.