The emergence of UK drill music made headline news, portraying it as a criminal enterprise instead of recognising it as an art form. This new rap subgenre, however, is neither the first nor the only Black music to be targeted this way.
Policing the Beats rewinds the tape to demonstrate how music has been used as an instrument for policing Black people, from the era of colonial slavery to the present day, revealing the racist legal processes that make crimes out of rhymes.
This is the first in-depth account of the policing of Black music in Britain, highlighting the relationship between politics, culture and criminal (in)justice and inviting music lovers, scholars and activists to tune in.
Lambros Fatsis (aka Boulevard Soundsystem) is a lover of Black music(s) who lectures on the history of police racism and the criminalisation of Afro-diasporic music culture at City St. George’s University of London
Lambros will be interviewed by Keira V. Williams, a Reader in History at Queen’s University Belfast and the author of three books on gender, race, media, and pop culture in the United States. Her current research project explores R & B, postwar civil rights and the Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina in 1950.
This event will be followed by an all-vinyl Jamaican and Afro-Caribbean DJ set.
7.30pm – 8.30pm – Book talk / interview
8.30pm – 10.00pm – DJ session (vinyl)
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