The Book Club

Isolation (consequence of COVID-19) has reignited my love of reading. Having time to sit and get lost in a book truly is a form of self care. This forum was created to share and discuss our current reads.

Music

Globally, black artists are known to be the gatekeepers of genres like Rap, Rhythm and Blues, Jazz

and Soul; with genres such as Soca, Reggae, Dancehall, Afrobeats and the British originated Grime also having become more popular as of late. However, the stringent barriers that black music and artists are typically sorted into have definitely been called into question more recently with artists like Tyler the Creator (calling out the categorising his album ‘Igor’ as Rap and the use of the word ‘Urban’), Lil Nas X (broke into the Country charts with ‘Old Town Road’) and the new generation of alternative rap artists which includes music with indie/rock-rap sounds as has been heard from artists like Juice Wrld, Lil Uzie Vert, Travis Scott etc.

Black people and artists are always reminding the world how multifaceted we are when it comes to our musical preferences. Black people do not just listen to rap music; not all black people like rap music. Shocking. Our aim is to cover and explore the wide range of genres covered by, and influencing artists of colour, with the objective of hopefully expanding all of our music libraries.

TV/Film

As has become abundantly clearer in the last few years black representation in the movie and TV industry is extremely important. And no, we’re not referring to the stereotypical roles that constantly portray people of colour as angry or violent, drug dealers or addicts, criminals, loud or plain ass uneducated and a special shout-out to the most common insipid token character. You know, the roles forever being shoved down our throats, with a side serving of unnatural mannerisms and forced vernacular, indicating (if not already abundantly clear) that these roles were not written ‘for us, by us’.

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Luckily, times have changed and the impact of the African-American, African, Black-British, Latina and Asian communities in the film industry are clear. TV shows such as Insecure, Kim’s Convenience, Top Boy, Never Have I Ever, Blood and Water, Black-ish (and the other Ish-series) and sooo many others not only better conveys the lifestyles of people of various cultures and the way they tackle situations both in and out of their own communities; but more importantly how much more dynamic these characters can be. Not only are these stories captivating just for the interest of representation but more so for a reprieve from the reoccurring stories that we get from regular programming.

Here, amongst other things, we’re hoping to share and review our favs, both old and new; hopefully get new suggestions and who knows, maybe one day get to a point where we can create such stories that are also representative of the culture.