Bass Culture is a three-year academic research project exploring the impact of Jamaican and Jamaican-influenced music on British culture. Covering the period from the mid-1960s to the present day, with a focus on London and a particular interest in the years 1976 – 1981, the research explores the profound ways in which the island’s music remade popular music in Britain – and was fundamental in the emergence of multiculture in the British city and the redefinition of the post-colonial nation. Bass Culture is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and runs til spring 2019.

We will explore the impact of Bass Culture through the explosion of Jamaican genres like ska, reggae and dub in the UK to the development of distinct British variants like dub poetry, two-tone and lovers rock. We will examine Bass music’s influence on British pop from The Clash to Skepta; and map the evolution of subcultural dance genres with Bass at their root, jungle to broken beat, dubstep to grime. We will also explore Bass Culture as a creative practice, an independent economy and a source of alternative philosophical and political ideas.