Paul Gilroy - Black British Music
“People are really very afraid that this country will be overrun by people from a different culture,” Margaret Thatcher declared in 1978. Nearly ten years later, Paul Gilroy offered a very different perspective. British culture already belongs to the children of immigrants, and its music is inseparable from a diasporic and cosmopolitan counter-culture linking Europe, America and Africa, which he called the Black Atlantic. From the cult of early soul-funk imports to sound systems and the early days of ‘UK’ rap, Black Britons have been part of an anti-colonial resistance so powerful that some white artists and audiences project their own desires for dissent onto it or appropriate their styles. Avoiding both the essentialisation of identities and their denial, Paul Gilroy describes how Black artists reinvent their origins and escape domestication by the market. And in the face of the violence of racism, he affirms the utopian scope of Afro-diasporic music, far beyond the boundaries of the nation-state.
Ce livre a été traduit de l’anglais par Maboula Soumahoro et est préfacé par David Bola.
The author:
Paul Gilroy is an English sociologist and the author of several renowned works, including *Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack* (1987), from which this book is adapted, *The Black Atlantic* (1993) and *Postcolonial Melancholy* (2006). He was part of the Cultural Studies movement alongside Stuart Hall. His work has transformed the study of diasporas and the politics of race.
Foreword:
David Bola is a French freelance journalist specialising in popular music. He works with the media outlet Grünt and writes articles for Musique Journal and Tsugi, having previously worked for several years at Radio Nova.
Translation:
Maboula Soumahoro is a senior lecturer in American civilisation at the University of Tours, specialising in US, African-American and Black/African diaspora studies in the Atlantic world. She is notably the author of the autobiographical essay Le Triangle et l’Hexagone. Reflections on a Black Identity (2020) and the translator of Saidiya Hartman’s classic, In Search of a Mother: On the Atlantic Routes of Slavery (2023).
Proofreading: Guillaume Heuguet
Cover illustration: Stephen Vuillemin
Graphic design: Charlie Janiaut
2026
French
176 pages
14 x 20.5 cm
ISBN: 978-2-494086-15-9
With the support of the Centre National du Livre
© Audimat Editions
Paul Gilroy - Black British Music
“People are really very afraid that this country will be overrun by people from a different culture,” Margaret Thatcher declared in 1978. Nearly ten years later, Paul Gilroy offered a very different perspective. British culture already belongs to the children of immigrants, and its music is inseparable from a diasporic and cosmopolitan counter-culture linking Europe, America and Africa, which he called the Black Atlantic. From the cult of early soul-funk imports to sound systems and the early days of ‘UK’ rap, Black Britons have been part of an anti-colonial resistance so powerful that some white artists and audiences project their own desires for dissent onto it or appropriate their styles. Avoiding both the essentialisation of identities and their denial, Paul Gilroy describes how Black artists reinvent their origins and escape domestication by the market. And in the face of the violence of racism, he affirms the utopian scope of Afro-diasporic music, far beyond the boundaries of the nation-state.
Ce livre a été traduit de l’anglais par Maboula Soumahoro et est préfacé par David Bola.
The author:
Paul Gilroy is an English sociologist and the author of several renowned works, including *Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack* (1987), from which this book is adapted, *The Black Atlantic* (1993) and *Postcolonial Melancholy* (2006). He was part of the Cultural Studies movement alongside Stuart Hall. His work has transformed the study of diasporas and the politics of race.
Foreword:
David Bola is a French freelance journalist specialising in popular music. He works with the media outlet Grünt and writes articles for Musique Journal and Tsugi, having previously worked for several years at Radio Nova.
Translation:
Maboula Soumahoro is a senior lecturer in American civilisation at the University of Tours, specialising in US, African-American and Black/African diaspora studies in the Atlantic world. She is notably the author of the autobiographical essay Le Triangle et l’Hexagone. Reflections on a Black Identity (2020) and the translator of Saidiya Hartman’s classic, In Search of a Mother: On the Atlantic Routes of Slavery (2023).
Proofreading: Guillaume Heuguet
Cover illustration: Stephen Vuillemin
Graphic design: Charlie Janiaut
2026
French
176 pages
14 x 20.5 cm
ISBN: 978-2-494086-15-9
With the support of the Centre National du Livre
© Audimat Editions
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Description
“People are really very afraid that this country will be overrun by people from a different culture,” Margaret Thatcher declared in 1978. Nearly ten years later, Paul Gilroy offered a very different perspective. British culture already belongs to the children of immigrants, and its music is inseparable from a diasporic and cosmopolitan counter-culture linking Europe, America and Africa, which he called the Black Atlantic. From the cult of early soul-funk imports to sound systems and the early days of ‘UK’ rap, Black Britons have been part of an anti-colonial resistance so powerful that some white artists and audiences project their own desires for dissent onto it or appropriate their styles. Avoiding both the essentialisation of identities and their denial, Paul Gilroy describes how Black artists reinvent their origins and escape domestication by the market. And in the face of the violence of racism, he affirms the utopian scope of Afro-diasporic music, far beyond the boundaries of the nation-state.
Ce livre a été traduit de l’anglais par Maboula Soumahoro et est préfacé par David Bola.
The author:
Paul Gilroy is an English sociologist and the author of several renowned works, including *Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack* (1987), from which this book is adapted, *The Black Atlantic* (1993) and *Postcolonial Melancholy* (2006). He was part of the Cultural Studies movement alongside Stuart Hall. His work has transformed the study of diasporas and the politics of race.
Foreword:
David Bola is a French freelance journalist specialising in popular music. He works with the media outlet Grünt and writes articles for Musique Journal and Tsugi, having previously worked for several years at Radio Nova.
Translation:
Maboula Soumahoro is a senior lecturer in American civilisation at the University of Tours, specialising in US, African-American and Black/African diaspora studies in the Atlantic world. She is notably the author of the autobiographical essay Le Triangle et l’Hexagone. Reflections on a Black Identity (2020) and the translator of Saidiya Hartman’s classic, In Search of a Mother: On the Atlantic Routes of Slavery (2023).
Proofreading: Guillaume Heuguet
Cover illustration: Stephen Vuillemin
Graphic design: Charlie Janiaut
2026
French
176 pages
14 x 20.5 cm
ISBN: 978-2-494086-15-9
With the support of the Centre National du Livre
© Audimat Editions
