A vinyl record is entirely different to a downloadable audio book. The sound has a tactile element by comparison to the almost soulless and unengaging sound of a digital download, to say nothing of the disconcerting absence of supporting material found on album covers. Perhaps the tactility flows from having to take the record out of one sleeve, and then another, before we can play it. Or perhaps it stems from the generous space for a sleeve’s artwork, lyrics, or commentary. Then again, the tactility might flow from the almost ritualistic act of putting the vinyl on a turntable and moving the needle onto the record. There is no more tantalising sound than the hiss or slight crackle signalling the needle’s connection to the vinyl just before the content begins [to play]. Another intriguing aspect of spoken word vinyl for me was how so many records contained only one track per side.
And now, right on time, Richard Hylton makes an original and deeply nuanced contribution to the spoken word genre, doing so within a uniquely Black British context. With vinyl records making a return, new generations of spoken word devotees will be in the making when they listen to the remarkable recordings that comprise Public Library. People of different genders, ethnicities, and backgrounds read extracts from the Introduction to a revised edition of K. L. Little’s Negroes in Britain: A Study of Racial Relations in English Society, originally published in 1948. Each speaker has their own range of intonations and words that they accentuate or even, at times, slightly stumble over. Individually and collectively, the range of voices make for absorbing listening. Hearing the Introduction to Negroes in Britain is a massively different type of engagement from reading it.
The year 1948 also, of course, saw the arrival of the Empire Windrush, and nearly 500 Caribbean passengers, heralding a decade and a half of Caribbean migration to Britain. So significant was its arrival, the people on board are now known as the Windrush generation. Negroes in Britain was a wide-ranging book that presented broader histories of Black people in Britain, alongside sociological and anthropological investigations into their contemporary presence.
Choosing the Introduction to the republished 1972 edition of Negroes in Britain for this fascinating project is of central importance. Black Britain was being brought into existence by the British-born or raised children of the Windrush generation, emerging into adolescence as young Black Britons in the early 1970s. By the end of the decade, Black Britain had established itself in unmistakable and oftentimes fractious terms, but 1972 afforded a valuable opportunity to look back on a quarter century of ‘race relations’, as well as beginning to come to terms with the evolving formations of Black communities across the country.
…Negroes in Britain was followed by other titles in the same mould throughout the 1950s and 60s. Michael P. Banton’s The Coloured Quarter (1955), Joyce Eggington’s They Seek a Living (1957), Sydney Collins’ Coloured Minorities in Britain: Studies in British Race relations based on African, West Indian and Asiatic Immigrants (1957), and Clifford Hill’s How Colour Prejudiced is Britain? (1965) are a few examples of such scholarship (though the Collins’ book did at least have the distinction of being written by a Black Jamaican). Scholarly variations aside, these books had a habit of treading and retreading what must, by the early 1960s, have seemed like familiar ground. Hylton’s Public Library is a pointed commentary on this body of scholarship which, somewhat curiously, seems not to have much of a place in our consciousness of modern mutations of diversity in Britain. One of Public Library’s most fascinating aural aspects is the range of the voices reading the extracts, creating a nuanced, layered and engaging listening experience. The voices transform the Introduction from an early 70s way of writing into decidedly textured 21st century sensibilities. Here, for your listening pleasure, is Public Library.
The above extracts are from record sleeve notes for Richard Hylton's 2024 vinyl record project, Public Library. The double vinyl record features a range of people reading extracts from the Introduction to Kenneth Little's study, Negroes in Britain, first published in 1948 and republished in the early 1970s. The record sleeve features notes by Eddie Chambers and Salomé Voegelin, whose contribution is titled "Sonic Fictions of Unsettlement".