• Vibes – A History of Urban Music is an oral history collection which traces the roots of urban music genres from Africa to the Caribbean and the UK.

• It focuses on how Birmingham and Coventry shaped new genres of music born out of this heritage.

• The listening sessions are part of a wider project to make these archives more publicly accessible.

A series of public listening sessions to shine a light on the oral histories of Black/urban music in Birmingham’s collections will be held at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery during November 2025.

Vibes - A History of Urban Music aimed to trace the roots of urban music genres from Africa to the Caribbean and the UK, focusing on the role that Birmingham and Coventry played in shaping new genres of music born out of this heritage.  

The collection includes oral history interviews conducted between 2003 and 2005 with people who originated from Africa, the Caribbean, America and the UK.

It covered a range of themes including musical influences, religious practices, experiences of racism and identity, as well as their thoughts on urban music cultures from the UK.

In 2005 the collection was deposited jointly with Birmingham Museums Trust and the Herbert Museum in Coventry.

The listening sessions will take place on Saturday 8 November and Saturday 15 November at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery. There will be three 90-minute sessions each day starting at 10.30 am, 1.00 pm and 3.00 pm. The sessions are free to attend and places can be booked through the Vibes: A History of Music listening session.

The sessions will include a selection of interviews that participants can choose from and a Q&A session, during which participants will have the opportunity to discuss the use of AI in oral history transcription, help to identify key words in the recordings or simply find out more about the Voices of the City project.

Visitors are advised that some of the recordings include explicit and racially explicit language, discussions of racism, prejudice and violence and might be unsuitable for younger listeners and triggering for others.

Siobhan Stevenson, oral history participation curator at Birmingham Museums Trust, said:

“As part of the wider Voices of the City project, which is focused on four specific oral history collections, this is the first step in our ambition to work with community participants and volunteers to explore how these histories can be recognised in the story of how the city and the wider region became what it is today and to make the archives publicly available.”

A blog post 'Vibes: A history of urban music' is also available online. The blog brings together a selection of oral history extracts from the collection and weaves them into a narrative that celebrates heritage, innovation, and the power of collective memory.