Wacker Black British Music Video

Grime Culture, the Ends, and the Neoliberal City
1. Auflage - Neueauflage 2026
ISBN: 978-3-8394-3577-9
Verlag: transcript
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 58, 300 Seiten, Format (B × H): 148 mm x 225 mm

Reihe: Postcolonial Studies

1. Why did you choose this topic?

While broadening my research focus on Black popular culture, I noticed that – while several publications had focused on Grime music before – the creative potential that can be found in many music videos tied to Black British genres of music produced since 2000 had rarely been acknowledged. This art form tells viewers a lot about how Black artists find creative ways to establish emancipatory outlooks toward their communities and exclusionary inner-city spatialities in the UK.

2. What new perspectives does your book offer?

As the first book-length monograph providing substantial readings of contemporary Black British music videos, their symbolism, and meaning-making mechanisms, it literally listens to a vast array of music videos. It asks how the music videos intervene into neoliberal constructions of inner-city space in the UK, and most importantly, it showcases how the medium may provide alternative strategies to grasp and reconfigure our understandings of ›the neoliberal city‹ in 21st century Britain.

3. What makes your topic relevant for current research debates?

I think the book speaks to several research and cultural debates, especially in the UK. From a scholarly perspective, the last decades have brought to the fore various cultural narratives that have served to (again) severly stigmatize Black and migrant communities, especially those living in council estates. Ideally, the book highlights creative counterpoints to that. I hope it is also a good read for anyone interested in audiovisual and media studies writ large.

4. Choose one person you would like to discuss your book with!

If I could, I would definitely discuss it with Kojey Radical, one of the artists whose work I analyze in the book. His art is so keenly aware of the various cultural histories that have shaped Black culture across the globe, and – from my perspective as a scholar – he simply delivers in finding innovative (and at the same time highly aesthetic!) ways to address current issues in the UK.

5. Your book summary in one sentence:

'Black British Music Video' is an attempt to move across British inner-city space along emancipatory patterns that music videos provide for us.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wacker, Julian

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Medienwissenschaften