Associate Professor Mykaell Riley

Dr Mykaell Riley (opens in a new tab)

ASSOCIATE PROFFESSOR Associate Professor CONSULTANT/ CURATOR/ RESEARCHER /PRODUCER/SONGWRITER/ Fellow of Arts & Business & Royal Society for the Arts

Current: 2024: Consultant/ Curator The Beyond The Baseline 500 years of Black British music exhibition (opens in a new tab) at the British Library/ National Sound Archive (opens in a new tab) – Academic Board for the Museum of London (opens in a new tab) – Independent Governor at Leeds Arts (opens in a new tab) – External Examiner Trinity Laban (opens in a new tab) –  Editorial Board /Cambridge Elements in popular Music – trustee for Tavaziva Dance (opens in a new tab),

Background – Mykaell’s career started as a founder member of the British roots Reggae band Steel Pulse who went onto receive a Grammy. As a writer/producer (opens in a new tab), Mykaell’s work (opens in a new tab) has encompassed (opens in a new tab) TV, Film and Theatre, resulting in over eleven UK top twenty positions, and three UK number ones. This includes work on Soul 2 Soul E17, and Mark Morrison. He also formed Britain’s first black pop string section (opens in a new tab), the Reggae Philharmonic Orchestra (opens in a new tab), and composed extensively for television including the BBC, SKY, Endemol And Netflix. In 2024 he secured IMDB credits as the music director (opens in a new tab) for the BBC TV series Boarders (opens in a new tab)– currently working on series 2.

Academia – Mykaell is Director of the Black Music Research Unit (BMRU) which he established at the University of Westminster (opens in a new tab) in 2012. On the back of several smaller grants, in 2016 he landed his first major award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Titled Bass Culture (opens in a new tab) it focused on the history and impact of Reggae in the UK. The first output from Bass Culture in 2017 was the Grime Report (opens in a new tab) which in partnership with Ticketmaster and Live Nation, resulted in a change in London Metropolitan policing. In 2018 he staged the Bass Culture Exhibition, the UK’s largest exhibit on the impact of Jamaican music, and in 2019 he released the ‘Bass Culture’ documentary film. An intergenerational explanation of Soundsystem culture and it’s connection to UK Grime music. The overall project was shortlisted for The Times Award 2021. The BMRU contributed an Impact Case Study to the REF2021 (opens in a new tab), one of three that led to CREAM (opens in a new tab) (Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media), and the School of Arts being ranked 1st for Impact in the UK by THES.

For more information about Dr Riley’s projects and publications, see here. You can get in touch with him at M.S.Riley@westminster.ac.uk.