Remember the ‘90s: how it was and how it’s come to this today. Rare audio find provides insight.
Arare find of audio archives from the 1990s should help shed greater light on Black lives in the UK, abroad and London in particular, back then.
The find by presenter turned academic Dr David Dunkley Gyimah provides a bridge for how things are today, that is cultural gains and missed opportunities, as well as comparisons with the 80s when UK race polices and cultural conversations were being reshaped.
In the 1990s Dunkley Gyimah, a newly qualified Maths and Chemistry graduate became a freelance journalist and was given the reigns, with co-presenter Sheryl Simms a Literature graduate, to launch a new show on BBC Greater London Radio.
The talk show, Black London which they were largely given carte blanche as presenter/ producers was designed to widely feature first generation Black-British Born discussing issues that were crystallising around multi-culturalism, inclusion and diversity in the UK — post Thatcherism as new political centrism was shaping at home, the EU and abroad.
Dunkley Gyimah says:
I think it was a time of challenging the status quo in different ways to our parents whilst building on their struggle. Hence in our show we’d feature reports on, The Black law Society with Peter Herbert, who’s now a judge, challenging Police suss laws. The first interview with newly appointed Black head of the CRE, Herman, now Lord Ouseley. The first Black model to grace a TV jeans commercial after Nick Kamen’s jeans advert sent the industry wild, and how Black literary writers and publishers were using night clubs, and car boot sales, to sell their books.
The show included, Bernie Grant MP, Darkus Howe, novelist Alice Walker, Actress Eartha Kitt, Spike Lee, Louis Farakhan, Writer Trix Worrell a young entrepreneur Kanya King, now a CBE, remortgaging her house to set up something called the Mobo Awards.
The name George Floyd would yet be known to the world for another thirty years. Rodney King however was. Black London covered the outrage to his brutal beating, the ensuing Riots in LA, and the court case of the policemen.
What might you ask has society at large, and British society in particular adapted to since the 90s? How does the Windrush hostile policies compare with the 90s? How are the gains in equity? How is the UK viewed under the lens of multi-culturism today?
Some experts blame many of the 90s social ills on the present day crisis. Globally there were missed opportunities. But what of inclusion? The archive hears from the first student to enter Oxford University, as well as officials, under a new scheme to boost intake for minorities. Thirty years later Stormzy would introduced a bursary to increase the progress of minorities into the university.
Black London aired for almost two years from its first broadcast in September 1991, until the format was changed and both Simms and Dunkley Gyimah were dropped. They moved on to the BBC’s Youth Def II series of Reportage and Rough Guides.
Dunkley Gyimah later relocating to South Africa would go onto report on the election of President Nelson Mandela and research and present on BBC Radio 4 the critically acclaimed First time Voters. He followed for six months four Black and Brown young people voting for the first time — from the lifting of Apartheid laws.
Archive of Black London was stored, though never indexed, and was dumped into a skip to make way for office space. Hence recordings of the show has been lost. Thirty years later during Lockdown, Dunkley Gyimah discovered in his garage some duplicate recordings of the show on cassettes and loose reels.
In 2021, working with a professional archivist Jose Velazquez from @DOKUMENTA VIDEO, the find was submitted to a global archive body FIAT/IFTA who run a global competition for saving archives. Against stiff competition, the collection won.
It included video and audio recordings from the first current affairs digital co-production between Ghana and South Africa, and an interview with an understated methodist who befriended the King of the Ashanti people, Nana Prempeh II to set up a school in Ghana. That school Prempeh College won the World Robotics championship twice in 2021 and 2020, beating schools from the USA and China.
MeCCSA on the BBC 1922–2022
In November 2022, Dunkley Gyimah was invited to present the archive at a conference: The BBC 1922–2022 — Navigating the Waves of Change, in November 2022, alongside leading academics in radio, as well as enthusiasts and past and current radio producers and presenters.
At the gathering Dunkley Gyimah argued the importance of archive and how it shapes understandings and frames present issues today. He says,
The point being there’s relatively very little archive on shows catering for Black and diverse audiences available, and fewer outlets to revisit them. I’m a fan of the Reunion and Rewind on BBC Radio 4 — both shows which make use of past events to inform the present.
The importance of Archive was the subject of Dunkley Gyimah’s article for a new national journal Representology. The journal is a collaboration between the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity and Cardiff University and was co-founded by Dunkley Gyimah and Birmingham Diversity Champions Prof Diane Kemp and Marcus Ryder MBE
In it he recalled one of many inspiring encounters with influential people on the show like Nigerian superstar Fela Kuti, who attempted to light up in the studio, and it wasn’t a cigarette. Dunkley Gyimah says he had to plead with him not to. After his interview in which he dissed he own invention Afro beat, he asked to be taken clubbing and for a meal.
Dunkley Gyimah sees the archive as akin to a time tunnel, coupled with his experience of working in Radio in the 90s and 2000s — from Radio 4, 5 and the BBC World Service. He’s seeking collaborations to the collection to help enrich audiences and scholars about the issues of the 90s and how they play out today.
About
Dr David Dunkley Gyimah has since gone on to make his mark as a UK leading storyteller and videojournalist winning a number of international awards. He’s a Reader/ Associate Professor at Cardiff University in Innovation, Diversity and Journalism, and former artist in residence at the Southbank Centre. He’s behind the Leaders’ List with Simone Pennant MBE that exhibited 57 leading Black and Brown UK TV/ Radio. He can be contacted here gyimahd@cardiff.ac.uk
A Ghanaian-Brit, he was voted one of the top 40 most influential Ghanaians abroad by the Ghana High commissioned backed-Ghana Abroad.
