V&A East opened its five-storey Stratford museum in April and spent the whole first statement on Black British sound: 125 years, four acts, more than 200 objects, 60 of them newly acquired. Jme's Super Nintendo and Mario Paint cartridge from his first 90s experiments sit near Joan Armatrading's childhood guitar and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's conducting batons from the early 1900s, while a headset runs 120 tracks cut with full access to the BBC archive. Curator Jacqueline Springer built it as canon-keeping rather than nostalgia: lovers rock, 2 Tone, Brit funk, jungle, trip hop, UK garage and grime treated as one continuous engineering project, staged a short walk from the stadium where Dizzee Rascal played the 2012 opening ceremony. It runs to January 3 at £22.50, £10 under 26, and this summer the Olympic Park around it hosts a festival on the same theme with Sadler's Wells East and the BBC.
8.2SCORECROWNFINDHEAT 48▮
FIND — the score is ahead of the room.
BENCHMARK IN THE 50 · Black Film Archive — the 50's canon-keeper; this is the same recovery work at museum scale, for British sound instead of American film
THE MUSA FAMILY · HEIRWAVE
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