A talk by music journalist and musician Stephanie Phillips on Black artists who pioneered alternative music, reclaiming its history from the 1930s to the present day.
Stephanie Phillips is at the Millennium Gallery on Sunday 25 October for We Were Here, a talk that looks at the Black artists who steered alternative music from the 1930s to the present day. It's not just a history lesson; it's an argument that there would be no alternative music without them.
Phillips is a music journalist and musician who writes for the Guardian, the Independent, New Statesman, Kinfolk, Quietus, Vice, Bandcamp and The Wire. She's also the founder of the Black feminist punk band Big Joanie and part of the collective behind Decolonise Fest, so she's as much a part of the scene she's talking about as she is a reporter of it. That dual perspective comes through in how she frames the session: she describes Blackness as inherently punk and traces the lineage of alternative music back to the Black artists who helped shape it, including Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Little Richard, Jimi Hendrix and Tina Turner. The talk doesn't stop in the past, either — she points to a positive future for alternative music in the hands of Gen Z Black musicians.
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It's a session that reclaims a history that often gets left out of the story, and it's held in the Cadman Room at the Millennium Gallery, 48 Arundel Gate, Sheffield S1 2PP. BSL interpretation is available. The talk starts at 15:00, and tickets are £12 or £10.
