The Queen of Ska talks life, music, racism and multiculturalism at festival event
It was a night to hear one of the pioneering figures of Two-Tone music talk about her life, journey and experiences.
The Newhampton Arts Centre in Wolverhampton played host to an evening with singer, broadcaster, actor and writer Pauline Black as part of the Wolverhampton Literature Festival on Thursday, February 1.
A crowd of around 40 people settled down to hear from The Selecter singer as she was interviewed by author and writer Cheri Percy about her book “Black by Design” and about her life, which started in Romford in the early 1950s.
Starting by talking about her experiences of being on a photoshoot in the late 1970s with other female singers such as Chrissie Hynde as part of the New Music News magazine, the evening was a chance to hear Pauline’s thoughts on all matter of subjects.
These ranged from her early life growing up in Essex as a black girl adopted to a white family and the racism she heard from her parents to her own musical awakening, with a reading from her book detailing visits to her friends the Hawthorns.
In the reading, she spoke of the activities they would get up to and how, at certain times, they would be told to go outside as the mother would want to paint in the kitchen while listening to jazz music and how, one day, she was looking at a book about jazz poet Langston Hughes and ended up listening to one of his poems with the mother.
Cheri Percy was the conduit to the evening, taking the audience on the journey through Pauline’s life, with stops including her musical journey in Coventry, playing folk clubs with a guitar and Leonard Cohen songs to her first show with the Selecter dressed in pink spandex and discovering her look when she wore a trilby hat for the first time.
Erudite, humorous and very knowledgeable, Pauline held court as she spoke about racism at Selector shows, talking about how they would defy the skinheads seig heiling at them by leaving the stage and having the ring leaders kicked out, before then asking the rest of the audience to help get rid of the rest of the group.
It wasn’t all music chat as Pauline also spoke about her experiences interviewing the Rev. Jesse Jackson at Atlanta airport for Black on Black, as well as her acting experiences, and also spoke about how a bad encounter with a rude South African woman in the toilets at Selfridges began the journey of discovering her birth mother.
It was heartening to hear how Pauline rediscovered her birth family and had a relationship with her Jewish mother (who called her Belinda, the name she was born with) and how her father had been a Nigerian prince.
The music was what brought the people to the Newhampton Arts Centre, however, and Pauline said that after years of struggling with it, she had discovered the balance between playing new songs with the Selecter, but also being able to play the songs that people knew and loved.
Those attending also got into the action by asking some very intelligent questions, from which we discovered that Pauline’s favourite music growing up was Tamla Motown, the ultimate ska drummer was John Bradbury from the Specials, she loved her role as a Deputy Lieutenant of the West Midlands and she was still passionate about race relations, making this country better and celebrating multiculturalism in all its forms.
The event was a fantastic opportunity to hear the stories and experiences of the Queen of Two-Tone and learn just a bit more about someone with 45 years of life experience and so much more to come.
