Brixton has a rich musical heritage, stretching back to the late 19th and early 20th century, when Brixton was home to many music hall, variety and cinema performers.
That tradition has continued through the years up to the present day. However, surprisingly little has been documented, either in print or orally, about Brixton’s post war musical history. I have been a gig and club goer in Brixton since the mid 1980s and have lived in Tulse Hill since 2000. For a long time it has been on my mind that something needed to be done to document Brixton’s musical history, so I decided to set up the Brixton Music Memories project.
The aims of the project are two-fold. Firstly, to collate information about Brixton’s music history from archive material, such as the music press of the day. However, this is only a small part of the story. The music press, particularly in the 60s, provided very limited coverage of live events and didn’t cover whole genres of music such as ska and reggae.
Most importantly, I felt it was important that people’s voices were heard. We all have stories to tell. So the second aim is to create an oral history of Brixton’s music scene. We would love to hear people’s memories, whether you want to speak on the record or off the record.
Feel free to collaborate, share your memories, articles and memorabilia.
Do get in touch via our e-mail, brixonmusicmemories@gmail.com
Cheers,
Simon
brixtonmusicmemories 