Presented in conjunction with our current exhibition
What Presence! - The Rock Photography of Harry Papadopoulos.

Pauline Black was reading from Black By Design followed by a Q+A.
 
'Hands down Pauline Black possessed the best voice that ever graced a 2-tone release. Blessed with a bewitching soprano and dramatic panache, Black's voice reached plateaus that made every other musical detail sound like part of a backdrop painted just to set the stage for her entrance'
Rolling Stone 

Lead singer for platinum-selling 2-tone band The Selecter, Pauline Black has been in the music business for over thirty years. The only woman in a movement dominated by men, she was the Queen of Ska. 

Born to an Anglo-Jewish mother and Nigerian father in 1953, Pauline Black was later adopted into a white working class Essex family and brought up by middle-aged parents as a white girl. By adolescence she was determined to define herself as society saw her - black. After changing her surname by Deed Poll she explains, 'My family refused to call me black, so I named myself Black, then they had to'.

Thrust into the pop limelight in 1979, as lead singer of legendary 2-Tone band The Selecter, she toured with label-mates The Specials and Madness, spreading a conscious, multicultural musical message worldwide, while simultaneously dealing with band politics, racism, and even almost being shot at by Texan rednecks. In the mid-80s she presented Britain's first black TV programme, Black on Black for Channel 4, before establishing a successful acting career which culminated in an award-winning stage performance as jazz singer Billie Holiday in London.

In Black by Design she candidly illuminates her unique experience as a British mixed-race woman who yearns to know her origins and find the answer to a lifelong question - Who made me? - which is finally answered half a world away in Australia.

Black By Design is published by Serpent's Tail.

Documentation from the evening.

The Selecter - Photo by Harry Papadopoulos

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