Popular Music: Global Reggae Research Seminar

This session features a panel presentation from members of BCMCR’s Global Reggae Research Project. We focus on music and the visual image, music culture archives and the role of the researcher in musics of black origin. We also draw upon our collaborations with the Reggae Research Unit at the University of West Indies, Mona and the International Institute for Reggae Studies, University of Minnesota, and our recent field work in Kingston, Jamaica and New York, USA. The session will be chaired by Dr Rachel-Ann Charles and our presentation will include a focus on the following:

• One Love: capturing the cultural investment in reggae through the photographic portrait;

• beyond the Archive: (Re)visiting Reggae’s History & Archives;

• the researcher in and outside British and Jamaican reggae culture;

• reggae music culture in Europe, North and South America

The presentation focuses on our approach to researching music communities around reggae across the world. We include photographs from William Ellis from the One Love and Back on Stage projects he developed with Tim Wall over the last five years. These feature portraits of reggae innovators and key players from the historic and contemporary scenes in Birmingham and London, placed alongside those from Kingston, Jamaica, and those based in Queens and Manhattan, New York, USA. Drawing on our work with historical materials as archivists and researchers, Pedro Cravinho will outline what materials have been preserved in Jamaica and the UK, the implications of selection policies, and the benefits to researchers. Tim Wall and Ben Torrens explore the idea of the ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ researcher working with the histories of diaspora music cultures. This includes our reflections as white British men, and our roles as senior historian of reggae and an emerging researcher and reggae bass player, engaging with distinct reggae subcultures as lived experiences. We also draw on contributions from Rachel-Ann Charles, Matt Grimes and Juan Pablo Viteri, who have been capturing the diverse reggae cultures in the Caribbean, UK and South America.

About the speakers

Dr Pedro Cravinho is a Senior Research Fellow at Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, and the Keeper of the Archives at the Faculty of Arts, Design & Media. He researches and writes about jazz, media, and archives, with primary focus on the twentieth-century jazz diaspora social, political and musical history. He is a key member of BCU’s University’s Global Reggae Research Project.

William Ellis is a Visiting Research Fellow in Photographing Popular Music Culture at the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research. He is a professional photographer of international renown specialising in popular music photography, and a key contributor to the Global Reggae Research Project at BCU. His other practice-based research in photography includes work on jazz.

Juan Pablo Viteri is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, based at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador. He is a cultural researcher and a visual and sound artist whose main interest is the study of new media and Latin-American independent music. His approach aims to explore the intersections between academic research and creative practice.

Benjamin Torrens is a Midlands4Cities-funded doctoral student in the Birmingham School of Media at Birmingham City University. Ben is studying for a thesis entitled ‘Dance a yard before you dance abroad: reggae as a music production culture in Jamaica and Britain, 1968 – 1981’. He is a member of the Midlands4Cities-funded Midlands Music Research Network, as well as BCU’s University’s Global Reggae Research Project.

Tim Wall is Professor of Radio and Popular Music Studies at Birmingham City University. He leads the Global Reggae Research Project. He researches into the production and consumption cultures around music and the media and how cultural activism can lead economic and social change. His publications include Studying Popular Music Culture and articles on the mediation of popular music and its cultural consumption.