V&A East Museum And The Music Is Black: A Full Tour Of The UK's Newest Museum

I really do think that this museum is going to knock people's socks off. It's knocking mine off as we speak. I'm Jessica, the museum guide, and today I'm here at the press preview for the Victoria and Albert East, or V&A East Museum, in East London. The museum's not open to the public for a few more days, but I've been invited to have a look around and show you what makes this new institution so unique and unusual on London's museum scene. We're going to be having a walk around its two different galleries entitled Why We Make, looking at the architecture and building itself, hearing from the head curator and director, and exploring its first ever temporary exhibition, The Music is Black. If you're new to my channel, welcome. I'm delighted that you're here. I post meticulously researched tours of museums, oddities, and heritage sites, so I really hope you choose to like and subscribe. If you're a regular viewer and you'd like to see even more tours every month, well, you're in luck. You can head over to my Patreon channel, and there I release an extra full-length video tour every month. Last month, it was a tour of the Tudor Gallery at the Maritime Museum, and the month before that, a bunch of weird little bits that I love at the British Museum. Join me. Before we start looking around the galleries, I want to talk a little bit just about the building itself and the area that we're in right now. Just walking alongside the canal, West Ham Football Stadium just behind me, and I remember when there really wasn't a lot here. A lot of houses and things were bulldozed to make way for the Olympics, actually. This is old industrial land, and that's why it's really exciting, interesting, confusing, some might say, to see it fully regenerated as a cultural quarter with the new Sadler's Well Theatre, of course, the Victoria and Albert Storehouse, which we've already toured together a couple of times, and now here, the new V&A East. The building itself has been a little bit of a marmite. That means it's a love it or hate it, and it's designed by the Irish architecture firm O'Donnell and Toomey. Just outside, we can see this enormous 18-foot sculpture called A Place to Belong by Thomas J. Price, and this is really going to connect to some of the things that we're going to hear the director talking about a bit later on. The sculpture depicts a teenager kind of gazing into the distance with a phone in her hand, and the hope is that teenagers, young people, and people of all kinds will come to this museum and find a place of connection and culture. Let's head inside. Now, on our tour today, I'm not going to try to show you every single thing here. First of all, because we would be here for three days. Second of all, because I would go mad. And finally, because I haven't done any prior research on these objects. Normally, when I'm giving a tour, I have already done a lot of research. I have sometimes even written meticulous scripts so that I don't get any details wrong. That's not what we're doing today. This is my complete first impression of the museum. You're seeing it at the same time that I am, and so I'm just going to be showing you some beautiful things, and maybe we'll come back in the future to do a more detailed, nuanced, and researched tour. Just going to start walking over to different objects that catch my eye. I think I know what these are. I feel like these might be designed by Lee Bowery. They are. These are the ballet costumes for Because We Must in 1987. That were designed by Australian artist, designer, and queer activist Lee Bowery. I love Lee Bowery. I don't actually think that these were at the Lee Bowery exhibition at the Tate Modern. If they were, I don't remember them. But they've got one of his signature hallmarks, the face mask. And you might know RuPaul's Drag Race has borrowed heavily from this look. Here's a little bit of the display. Oh, we can even see some people wearing them here in a little outtake on the video screen of Because We Must. And fashion is at the core of everything at the Victoria and Albert. If you're seeing an exhibit or talking about a historical theme, you can pretty much guarantee that there will be fashion, costumes, and clothing involved. It's no different here. Let's go and have a look at some of these costumes on the wall. Wow. The trouser suit from Optical Shock in 2001, designed by Rie Kawakubo. And here in front of me, Vivienne Westwood bringing punk attitudes to the fashion world. There's some Vivienne Westwood at the Victoria and Albert in Kensington as well. Showing contemporary art and fashion objects design, but mixing and matching them with their historical inspirations as well. So here we can see a gown designed in 1744. This was designed by Anna Maria Garthwaite. If memory serves me correctly, she used to live in Spitalfields. She was an East End girl, just like this museum. Here is the S-Bend chair by Eileen Gray, designed and built in 1838, as well as her design sketches for this. Now that we've seen a little bit of the museum, it's time to hear from the director, Dr. Gus Casely-Hayford. And so one of the key things that we did was to get out into those communities, to speak to young people, and to get an understanding of what they would want from us. And they were really keen to tell us. I personally visited more than 100 schools in East London once lockdown was allowed. So how did we want to build a relationship with that sceptical generation? A relationship that would mean that this wouldn't just be a place that they would come with their classmates on a school trip, but they would come of their own volition. So we wanted to find the ways of changing that, of challenging that paradigm. And so what we did was to ask them what they wanted. But they also wanted narratives that could tell their stories in ways that really reflected their priorities. So I hope you'll come back here and enjoy it and fall in love with this space, because this, we hope, will be a place of refuge and reflection for many, particularly for the young. Now we're going to hear from the chief curator, Brendan Cormier. The V&A has always been a messier affair. We've always been a more heterogeneous affair. We've brought in, yes, great master's paintings, but also broken teacups, also copies of architecture. The goal of the V&A since the outset was to think about the idea of applied arts as art applied to everyday life. Art exists all around us. That's a great calling card to start talking to your audiences about artistic practice. And what we've done here that's different from anywhere else in the family of V&A museums, and quite frankly, probably different from most presentations of collections, is that we've radically mixed up our objects across thousands of years of time, across thousands of miles of geography, to tell universal stories about making. And the title of the gallery itself, Why We Make, is shameless about saying there's instrumentality making, there's purpose and reason behind making, and it's not just making for making's sake. It is a little bit strange to have it all behind glass, as opposed to, you know, most museums, things are set back from the pathways a little bit, yes, but they don't have this glass in front of you. And I wonder if that's because they're really hoping to engage with young people and children who might not normally visit museums and therefore not really realize that you're not supposed to touch things. A cabinet organ from 1600. Nice comfy chair to sit down and watch some contemporary dance. A little of this, a little of that. That really is my motto for the Victoria and Albert Museum. What did the director say? That it's a messy place. And you can see a mid-century modern chair and a medieval tapestry right at home next to each other. Oh, and you know, I'm always pointing these out, little things that you can touch, not just for visually impaired, but for people that may understand objects through touch better than by looking at them. This is the Paimio armchair. That word looks Finnish to me, is it? Yeah, Finnish designer Alvar Aalto originally created this chair for the Paimio sanatorium in Finland, dedicated center for patients recovering from tuberculosis. OK, that's really funny that I've seen this. On Easter, I was at a friend's house and they had some Adirondack chairs. I asked my British friends. None of them had ever called these an Adirondack chair. And I looked it up and told them that, yes, those chairs, too, were designed for tuberculosis sanatoriums. Oh, wow, look at this Tibetan Buddhist monastic costumes. This display case is all about caring for ourselves. And monks practice narrative sequences of charm dance as a form of meditation and ritual to cast out bad spirits. We actually talked about charm dances on my channel when we were looking at Tibetan bone trumpets and skull cups at the British Museum. Speaking of objects that we've seen in a number of other museums, some of my favorite objects are votive offerings to Catholic shrines. Remember, in Catholicism, as well as in many other religions, both contemporary and ancient, offering a symbol of your afflicted body part or a ailing person to a god or the god, depending on your religion, is a common way of making offerings to ask for healing and hope. These here are Hindu body stamps from the 1800s. These are beautiful. I saw some of these when I lived in India. I wish I'd picked some up. Commonly used for people to show veneration to Vishnu. And you press the stamps in a fragrant paste of white or red sandalwood and then apply them to your body. Display case full of posters and pamphlets and books about activism in East London. Oh, they're beautiful. Is this an architectural model or a dollhouse? I mean, maybe it can be both. It's a section model 1 to 10 scale of a terraced house on Cannes Street in Liverpool, part of the Granby Four Streets Project. In 2011, residents of Victoria's Granby neighborhood formed a community land trust that ultimately led to the renovation of 10 derelict houses. Ooh, what's this? Wow, I love this. This is a carnival costume from 1988 from Keith Kahn, a London artist who devoted his early career to designing for carnival in Trinidad and the UK, inspired by both his Trinidadian and Indian heritage. Wow, I love it. And this painting, this is Spellbound from the series Mercenary by Hugh Locke from 1998. Hugh Locke is a Guyanese British artist and his work explores the history and legacy of colonization in England. I went to see the Hugh Locke exhibition at the British Museum, was it last year? And a lot of the things I've seen actually do remind me of Hugh Locke so far. I didn't ever make a video about it, but I do have an Instagram post if you want to check that out. I'm jessicathemuseumguide, obviously, on Instagram. Oh, I love this. The body is just a distraction if one doesn't know the person. By Zidi Nzangi, he's a Tanzanian-American designer, proposes a contemporary take on East African kanga textiles. And I love the Kool-Aid man bursting through the side. Also, is that the Republican donkey? Oh, wait, it's the donkey, the Republican or the Democrat. I'm Canadian, British, I don't need to know that. Bottom corner, a cross, apple, and an Aum symbol mixing commercial with the sacred, wow. This really does feel like a welcoming space. It feels like somewhere where hopefully some teenagers could come and feel comfortable. This is the Daria dress created by Molly Goddard, an East London-based fashion designer. It uses over 60 metres of fabric and it was worn by American singer Beyonce in the 2020 film, Black is King. Again, we have these very contemporary forms of portraiture and then right in the centre, this little piece, a copy after a self-portrait miniature by Sofonisba Angozola. She is one of the rare females. They're not actually as rare as you'd think, but females in fine art history. She was an Italian painter, painting in a profession dominated by men. And this copy was probably made by somebody in her artistic circle. I love this piece. I feel like I've seen something by this artist before, maybe at the big V&A? This is a portrait of Melissa Thompson from the Yellow Wallpaper series by Kehinde Wiley, a Nigerian-American artist. Kehinde met Hackney resident Melissa Thompson at Ridley Road Market. And it's supposed to evoke the grand royal portraits of the past. She certainly looks as regal and royal as anything I've ever seen at the Portrait Gallery. Portraits of people from East London alongside this here. This is called Jamfna Angels from 2006 by Moroccan-born East London-based artist Hassan Hajjaj. These women are wearing very traditional abayas, but also Louis Vuitton-branded babouche, that is, slippers. And in the frame, a series of modern consumer items all around the border. Just here, you can see the Arabic Coca-Cola cans. I could stay in here for another hour, but we have so much more to see. Now I'm heading upstairs to the second part of the Why We Make gallery. Let's not get the V&A East confused with the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington and the V&A Storehouse. The V&A in South Kensington is a nearly 200-year-old institution that showcases art, fashion, design, sculpture, archaeology, and architecture from all over the globe. And it was originally founded to be a repository for the treasures collected by, you guessed it, Prince Albert and Queen Victoria after the Great Exhibition. However, over the years, they've become incredible collectors of all kinds of things from this very minute, I'm sure they collected something that was made last week, all the way to thousands and thousands of years ago. The V&A Storehouse, which we toured last year when it first opened, you got my first impressions of it, that is their open storage concept warehouse where you can actually see their storage on display. It is curated, it's not just all tumbled onto shelves. And there, they've got amazing things on display and huge structures, rooms and buildings recreated that they wouldn't have room to do in South Kensington. There's also the Young V&A, which used to be called the Museum of Childhood, but we'll do that on a different tour. The V&A East, though, is something completely different than those other three. Yes, they've still got more ideas and more room to create new museums. Contemporary Indian fashion from Anith Arora that mirrors traditional patterns of India. Oh, wow, look at this garment. Oh, Izzy Miyake, experimenting always with Miyake. You're gonna experiment with shapes and colors. Wow. Just look at the use of space, going up the walls, having things down kind of below eye level, perfect for children. Look here, this is really just at my thigh level and you can see wood, leather, polyester that you can touch that mimic the things that you're seeing in the nearby displays so that children and other people can get involved. I love this by Gide Geshventner, a barge bench. More chairs. I once gave a friend a book called A History of the World in Chairs and it was way more interesting than you'd think it would be. So clearly, chairs can tell us a lot. Let's look here, oh gosh, look at this. Ensemble Look 55 from the Stink Collection by UK-based duo Vin and Omi, bringing together design and environmental activism. And this here, oh gosh, I love that. Look at this. Ensemble 2021 by East London-based Irish designer Richard Malone. He says, nothing should be considered luxurious or desirable that is harmful and exploitative. A long fringe dress made out of grape leather. Leather that uses the leftover seeds and skins of grapes instead of using animal skins. These are really neat. These are the repair craft of the Patragars. These teapots and bowls show years of repairs and reuse. They were imported from the Gardner Porcelain Factory in Russia and used in Afghanistan. Cultures of tea drinking in the country of Afghanistan gave rise to a skilled profession of porcelain menders known as Patragars. And here you can actually feel one of the teapots who repaired this teapot with metal rivets and a new spout. And oh, I do know this repairing with gold. The practice of kintsugi, which means joining with gold, is a centuries-old Japanese art practice used to mend broken ceramics. I did that with a beautiful bowl that I broke that I bought in Turkey. Hand-knitted jumpers and kurta pajamas. Ooh, felt and little felt furniture. Here's a piece of textile by Egyptian textile artist Harry Abdel-Kadar, who made this work in secret after witnessing the events of the January 25th Revolution in Cairo's Tahrir Square. This whole section is called Empowering Through Design and it's all about how everyday objects can be revolutionary when they improve people's daily lives. Ooh, undergarments. The social vision of utility fashion in wartime Britain. Tweed suits, girdles, selection of OXO Good Grits kitchen tools, peeler, masher from 2022. I think I have some of these, actually. I never thought to look in my kitchen cutlery drawer and think that I was looking at something from the V&A, but here you go. This really is a different kind of museum. Protest posters and activism. I went to a big exhibit about protest posters at the V&A in Kensington about 10 years ago now. And a huge poster showing the anatomy of an AI system. Maybe I'm a Luddite, but I can do without AI. I occasionally get asked if I use AI for my videos. No, not even a little bit. It would probably save me time, but would it really? Every time I have tried using it, it's returned things with so many errors that I've had to rewrite it anyway and fact check everything. What's the point of using it? For me, none. A painting of Mount Shacharunjaya. Pilgrimage paintings known as Trita Pata have a long tradition in the Jain religion of South Asia. This was created to hang in a temple during a pilgrimage season. The paintings enabled a virtual journey through the power of the imagination. I think that one of the original directors of the V&A, Henry Cole, would approve of the kind of mix and match, mishmash of this new V&A. I've already had a walk through The Music is Black, which is the temporary exhibition that is the inaugural one here at the museum. During my visit, I was wearing this headset. And when I tell you that the soundscapes it creates are like nothing I've ever experienced. For every five or 10 steps that you take in any direction, the music effortlessly and seamlessly changes and blends, blending spoken interviews that are being projected up on screen with the different music that you're looking at. And you could kind of create your own remixes by changing the way that you walked around the space. When I tell you that this was one of the most exciting and unique exhibitions I've ever been to, I'm not over-exaggerating. It's really, really worth coming. And don't say no to The Music headset. It is necessary. So as we're walking around the exhibit, imagine that there was different music instead of my voice telling you what you're looking at. Before we explore this exhibit a little bit, I'm going to let curator Jacqueline Springer tell you about it in her words. She's obviously the expert. My name is Jacqueline Springer. I'm the curator of the exhibition that you are kindly walking around. I'm very glad that you're here. I'm glad that this exhibition now exists in a tangible form. We've been working on this exhibition for four years and we have more than 200 objects. Some of the objects that you see on display here have joined the collection. And as a result of that, they're part of the nation's access via storehouse, like the blue spot there by Ewan Clarke and even this very first edition of Temple Recording from Red Saunders. In order for you to understand a lot of the motivation into the organisation of this exhibition, I thought it best to read from the book, which is available in the shop. Please digest it. Wherever there are humans, there is music. Long before a music industry was created, music was being used to address our human need, our compulsion even, to communicate, to connect and to reveal. Communication tied to location and context of performance evolved and evolved for black Africans trafficked from their home countries on the African continent, across the Atlantic Ocean and into enslavement in the Americas, throughout the Caribbean and further. The legacy of transatlantic African chattel enslavement enacted by European powers for almost four centuries is evident throughout The Music Is Black. The violent industrialised trafficking and forced labour of more than nine million black African men, women and children resulted in what is referred to as the African diaspora, the scattering of black African peoples around the world. The use of black to prefix the word music is both an accepted and a resented form of reference. Black music is a short, sharp description of the enormous and of the emotive. It describes African cultural and musical practice through descent, practices that survived and as such, black music is global proof of resilience. So, through this exhibition, through the four acts that comprise it, the exhibition structure and its artefacts, we will explore how sound cultivated from African indigeneity adapted and rebelled against colonial era traumas and post-colonial politics to triumph in its global dissemination and its influence to form the spine of contemporary popular music in the West. So, what I'm hoping would be evident from my readings, my stumbling readings, is that Act One provides the vertebrae of understanding of British colonial and imperial conduct and also the rebellion against oppression and enslavement, whether in the form of revolution and certainly through the subversion of authority throughout Carnival Masquerade and how Carnival in itself is a form of tribute not only to African origin identity but also to those who were using elements of it in the enslaved and post-enslavery context. Act Two is split into two parts and it's called modernity at the first part to have you think about how identity is politicised and how music speaks within the bodies of those colonised, whether it's through the wit and the power challenge of Calypso, Ska, Rocksteady. Every song, whether it's upbeat or even melodic, tells us something about the person and the time and their location. And so by the time we hit the second part of Act Two, you're looking at the post-war rebel yells, the youthquake as they call it. This all brings us to this act, this central portion of the exhibition which is British born black artists and white artists inspired by African musical traditions and musical techniques. We have eight genres here. There are more than eight genres that exist at the hands of black British artists but we only have enough floor space to tell an elegant and impactful and a digestible exhibition in the way that we chose to do. That's why it's called a British story, not the British story. So Act Four runs concurrent to this act. It has you think just like Act Two about the music that's important to Britain and how it's anglicised by those here. It's very apt that this is V&A East Museum's opening exhibition because art, music is an art form as I've said but it's also the greatest, one of the greatest social unifiers. These are amongst some of the oldest known stringed instruments in the world. This is a gourd fruit shell with a fabric buffer that supports a stringed arc. You pluck or strike the string and hold the gourd against your body and that amplifies the sound. In the 1930s, single stringed instruments like this one inspired the diddly bow which had an influence on the development of blues in America's Mississippi Delta and of course the diddly bow is where Bo Diddley took his name. In this gallery, this is pre the 20th century until World War Two and here talking a little bit about Calypso. Here's a bow tie that belonged to Lord Woodbine. He was a Calypso musician who settled in Liverpool after travelling from Trinidad to Britain on the Windrush. And over here, newspaper cutting talking about Mr Pablo Fonke and his trained steed, 1847. This was Norwich-born William Darby who was known professionally as Pablo Fonke was Britain's first black circus owner and he also had a brass band. And here's some of the batons belonging to Samuel Coleridge Taylor who trained at London's Royal College of Music. These conducting batons are from the early 1900s. And then black British music here at home from 1948 until 1969. The club sign for the New Four Aces. This was a 1960s reggae music club in London. And my eyes are of course run over here to this dress worn by Dame Shirley Bassey. Shirley Bassey is of course associated with the James Bond films because she recorded more of the James Bond themes than any other musical artist. And here she is wearing this same dress at the 85th Academy Awards in 2013 talking during the James Bond tribute. Wow, just look at this piano. This is called Winifred Atwell's Other Piano and it's from Trinidad-born pianist Winifred Atwell who made history in this country in 1954 as the first black British artist to top the UK singles chart with her ragtime song Let's Have Another Party. You can see her here at this piano. You can't talk about black British music without talking about Bob Marley and reggae and there's a whole room here dedicated to reggae. And as you heard her say, seven of the eight genres that are highlighted in Act Three derive from reggae. This room is called Act Three and it details all different kinds of unbelievable black British music from the 1950s, 60s, all the way up to really now. So up on the wall, a little bit of a documentary about the Rock Against Racism which took place after Eric Clapton made some very racist remarks. The man talking right now, Red Saunders, who was the co-founder of that festival is talking about the hypocrisy of someone like Eric Clapton who was so indebted to black music suddenly spewing racist sentiments and if you know the story, he later claimed that it was because of a drug-addled state. I don't know, man. I've taken drugs. Never made me say racist BS. Lovers Rock. I love Lovers Rock. Of course, my eyes are drawn to this shiny pink dress worn by Heather Heywood to perform on Top of the Pops in 1985. This one is so cool. This is the saxophone owned by Lee Thompson. He was part of the London six-piece band, Madness. Their saxophonist, Lee Thompson, decorated this instrument in Union Jack flag colors to perform at the London Olympics. The fur coat worn by Carol Thompson who wore it on the cover of her 1981 debut album, Hopelessly in Love. If you can think of any, and I mean any, black British artist, they are represented here. One of my favorite bands from this time period, The Beat. This is for their debut studio album, I Just Can't Stop It from 1980. Funnily enough, in Canada, they're actually called The English Beat because there was another band called The Beat. Jungle and drum and bass. Decks and a computer from the godfathers of jungle and drum and bass called Fabio and Groove Rider. Something from my era, trip hop and the Bristol sound. When I was standing here earlier, it was playing Tricky and Morcheeba and Portishead. There's actually a beautiful dress over here worn by the singer of Morcheeba, Sky Edwards. Oh, very cool. Well, here's a piece of contemporary art by London Trinidadian artist, Zach Ove. And I talk about Zach Ove a lot when I'm in the British Museum because he designed some carnival Moco Jumbies that are in the African collection there. Bristol trip hop artist, Tricky. A whole section dedicated to grime music and a promotional poster board for Dizzee Rascal's album Showtime in 2004. It's really interesting from a curation point of view that you can see the back of that bowed instrument that we talked about at the very beginning of our tour. There's the back of it here. So we kind of make contact with the origins of the music as we make our way through the exhibition. I really like that. And then this is the final gallery that Jacqueline was telling us about, talking about musical traditions and styles that have been imported from all around the world that are here and being made and changed and added to by black British artists. For instance, another conducting baton is one owned by a composer and educator, Shirley Thompson, who still uses baton to conduct orchestras. So from an African banjo from 1840 to an acoustic guitar from the 1960s all the way to this electric guitar owned by musician Omar in 2023. When I walked past here earlier and there was the music playing, I stopped when I heard Overload by Sugar Babes. It's a banger. I still love that song and here they are on the wall. I have to pay tribute to one of the queens of punk music, Polly Styrene. This was a dress that she made and wore in the 1970s. She also wore the helmet as well. A suit worn by Billy Ocean, an ensemble worn by Seal. Performance costumes worn by Mellon Kim. A dress worn by Rowetta and another dress worn by Desiree. You can just think of all those amazing songs as you see these costumes. And you can't look at this outfit without realising, of course, it was worn by Sade. These are some of my favourites of the exhibition. This stage wear, customised and worn by DJ Paulette. And there's a picture there of DJ Paulette at Flesh. One of the most talked about items in the entire exhibition is this stab vest worn by Stormzy in 2019. It was designed by none other than Banksy. Musician Stormzy wore this stab-proof vest for his headline performance on Glastonbury Festival's Pyramid Stage. And that was the first time a Black British male solo artist had had that honour. And here, an ensemble worn by Little Sims, by Comme des Garçons from 2023. A very classic Comme des Garçons silhouette. Another of my favourites, a suit worn by Skin from Skunkinancy. I'm lucky enough to be going to see Skunkinancy this summer. And a little tribute to Phil Lynette of Thin Lizzy. Phil Lynette is mostly associated with Ireland, but he was born in England. Finally, a screen kind of including everybody they said couldn't fit into everywhere else, and also contemporary musicians. Okay, now let's head outside to the terrace here on the third floor. It's an unbelievable view, but it is very windy right now. Let's have a look. Straight ahead of me there in the distance, the City of London. Hackney Wick and Hackney over there. It's probably loud. Canary Wharf over in that direction. The Orbiter Slide, West Ham. You can really see for miles around. I'm heading back inside. I enjoyed every minute that I spent here at this museum today, and I really think you will too. I have only shown you a scant smattering of the things on display. And remember, the main galleries are free, so anybody can come and check them out. I'll see you the next time I'm at the museum.