The American author Pat Thomas spent five years in Oakland, California researching Listen, Whitey! The Sights And Sounds Of Black Power 1965-1975 (Fantagraphics), his exhaustive survey of the impact of America's Black Power movement on the music of the era. While befriending members of the Black Panther Party, which formed in Oakland in 1966, Thomas discovered rare recordings of speeches, interviews and music by activists Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, Elaine Brown and many others. These recordings were a core part of the revolutionary programmes of the Panthers and other Black Power organisations, a way of asserting pride in the primacy of African American culture, and now they form the framework of this definitive study, one which also covers the output of Motown’s Black Power subsidiary label Black Forum, the Black Arts movement, Afrocentric jazz, gospel recordings that fused god and Black Nationalism, and numerous obscure regional and privately pressed Black Power soul and funk 45s from across America.

In this talk, Thomas will expand on some of the material uncovered during his researches, playing and discussing recordings by The Shahid Quintet, Stokeley Carmichael, Elaine Brown, Bob Dylan, The Watts Prophets, Dick Gregory, Eldridge Cleaver, The Lumpen and Amiri Barkaka. Many of these recordings are included on Light In The Attic's Listen Whitey! CD anthology that accompanies the book.

In the process of excavating Black Power's musical relics and artefacts, Listen Whitey! casts new light on an era in which activists such as Seale, Cleaver and Angela Davis became pop culture icons; and musicians, from Gil Scott-Heron and The Last Poets to Graham Nash and John Lennon, were regarded as revolutionary fellow travellers.

The talk will be followed by a panel discussion with author Paul Gilroy, film maker John Akomfrah and publisher Margaret Busby which will reflect on the successes and failures of Black Power's cultural revolution while assessing its influence on subsequent attempts to freight pop culture tropes with radical political agendas.

Hype for Listen Whitey!

"A huge contribution to our understanding of this crucial moment in our shared history, and a document that resounds with as much beauty, passion and hope as the records of that fervid time." – Jeff Chang, author of Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History Of The Hip-Hop Generation

"One of those rare works that does not seek to expose and exploit but to celebrate the works of black radicalism, delivered in a format that is accessible and almost as righteous as the material itself." – Rickey Vincent, author of Funk: The Music, The People And The Rhythm Of The One

Listen Whitey! at Fantagraphics
Listen Whitey! at Light In The Attic

The Wire Salon is a monthly series of salon events, hosted by The Wire magazine, and dedicated to the fine art and practice of thinking and talking about sound and music. The events consist of talks, panel discussions, film screenings and DJ sets.

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