INTRODUCTION
Black people have been making music in Leeds since at least 1749, when Thomas Mawson was a drummer for the army here. Before the Empire Windrush and the flourishing of Black music in Chapteltown and Harehills, Leeds had a lively relationship with Black Music. American gospel choirs introduced Victorian audiences to new music, and the city produced its own homegrown Black jazz stars. In the 1960s, Leeds West Indian Carnival claimed democratic space in the heart of the city and David Oluwale danced the night away at the Mecca Locarno. On this walk you’ll also learn about the Black people who influenced The Beatles and the UK’s very own first chart hitting reggae group, Bedrocks. The 1980s saw the city taken over by breakdancing teenagers, and in the 1990s, Chicago house became the sound of the city. This walk, devised by performer and researcher Joe Williams, of Leeds Black History Walk fame, with Leeds music researcher Dr Rosemary Lucy Hill, takes you on a journey exploring the importance of Black music and music culture for Leeds city centre.
THE ROUTE
Start: Leeds City Museum, Millennium Square, Leeds LS2 8BH
End: Leeds Town Hall, The Headrow, Leeds LS1 3AD
Length: approx. 1.5 miles
Joe Williams. Credit Joe Williams
Leeds City Museum, Millennium Square, Leeds LS2 8BH
Start at Leeds City Museum in Millenium Square. The museum was designed by Cuthbert Broderick, who also designed the Town Hall, and it is the current home of Nesyamun, Yorkshire’s oldest African resident. Nesyamun was an ancient Egyptian priest at the temple of Karnak. He is more commonly known as the Leeds mummy. In 2024, the museum hosted the award-winning exhibition ‘A Hip Hop Journey: 50 Years Of Kulture’, and will stage a new music exhibition in autumn 2025.
Pop inside the museum (donations welcome) to see Marcia Brown’s artwork about music in Chapeltown, ‘Frontline’. The piece combines embroidery, applique, fabric painting, and collage techniques to narrate the story of Frontline Educators and Sound Systems from the Windrush Generation in Chapeltown, Leeds. The art explores the impact of Sound Systems like Count Johnny, Jungle Warrior and Mavrick, playing Reggae music for events like Christening Parties or Roots and Culture Dances, promoting messages of Black Liberation, Rastafari, and political and social issues. 'The Frontline' on Grange Avenue served as a significant hub for these expressions within the Black Community.
From the museum steps, cross Millenium Square to the Civic Hall, with its golden owls. This is where Nelson Mandela gave a speech on 30 April 2001, when he was granted the Freedom of the City. Opposite the Hall are the Mandela Gardens. The dedication ceremony on 10th December 1983 was watched by about 5000 people.
Rose Bowl, Leeds Beckett University
Head up Portland Crescent. Turn left at the sign for Leeds Beckett University and stop by the Rose Bowl.
In 2024 Leeds Beckett University granted an honorary doctorate to, arguably, Leeds’ most famous daughter: Mel B of Spice Girls fame. Mel B was born in Harehills to Martin Brown from St Kitts and Nevis, and white mum, Andrea Dixon. They lived in Kirkstall and Burley, and she went to Intake High in Bramley. She trained as a dancer in Hyde Park. The Spice Girls are the best-selling girl group of all-time. Mel studied Trauma Informed Care at the University, and is now a patron of Women’s Aid.
Leeds Beckett was formerly Leeds Polytechnic University. It’s student union building, just round the corner on Portland Way, has played host to many great bands over the years. Of particular significance is Bob Marley’s gig here in November 1973 – their first UK gig outside London. The concert was recorded and released as the second disc of Burnin’ in 2004. Another great Live at Leeds along with the Who’s album.
The Polytechnic was also another the site of another important first outside London: the second ever Rock Against Racism (RAR) concert was held in a portacabin behind the Student Union building in 1977. Whilst nationally RAR was a direct response to Eric Clapton’s racist tirade at Birmingham Uni, in Leeds the National Front were an ever-present evil in the 1970s. A RAR club started 1978 and put on gigs at the Roots club in Chapeltown. Bands were Black, white, punk and reggae. Andy Gill, frontman of Leeds postpunk band Gang of Four says, “RAR was enormously important in Leeds both as a platform for bands and a banner people could rally round.”
At the start of July 1981, there was a Northern Carnival Against Racism in Potternewton Park which featured Aswad, Specials (debuting ‘Ghost Town’), Misty In Roots, Rhoda Dakar, Selecter, Au Pairs and others, alongside talks. Marcia Brown says, ‘The Rock Against Racsim concert was one of the biggest things in my life; in fact it was the first concert that I went to. The whole vibe of why I think Rock Against Racism was so powerful was, for me, the unity of the musicians together to fight racism’. Homer Harriott of Bodicean said it opened his eyes politically to understand what was happening to his community as a racist issue.
Merrion Centre, LS2 8NG, corridor between JR’s Barber Shop and the lifts
From Leeds Beckett, continue up Portland Crescent (or Portland Way) and turn right along Woodhouse Lane. Enter the Merrion Centre by the Woodhouse Lane entrance. Go past Morrisons and follow the lefthand indoor street until nearly at the exit to Merrion Way.
There used to be a parade of shops down this corridor and in the early 1980s this was the location of Jumbo Records. In the mid-1980s, Jumbo was about the only place in Leeds where you could buy breakdance records, and breakdancing was big amongst teenagers. Paul Weston, a teenager at the time, remembers that on a Saturday afternoon there would be about 200 teenagers at Jumbo: the Merrion Centre’s shiny marble floors were ideal for breakdancing. They would use ghetto blasters with funk and electro tapes such as Morgan Khan’s ‘Street Sounds’ series, which were pre-mixed by DJ's. The ghetto blasters went through a lot of batteries: Paul’s took twelve D sized batteries and the louder it was, the quicker the batteries ran out.
Leeds was coming out of the 1970s recession, and a lot of the dancers grew up in poverty. There was rivalry between areas of the city that made going into somebody else’s area risky in case you got into a fight. The Merrion Centre and breakdancing provided a central space and people would come from across the city, e.g. Seacroft and Chapeltown, to dance. However, there was such a rivalry between breakdancers that, as Paul says, that ‘you needed to have your shoes tied on tight or be able to fight’; you had to be able to run away or fight back.
The Merrion Centre has a lot of clubs and these have changed over the years. In the mid-1980s, Tiffany’s and Ritz/Central Park both ran Teen Scene events. These were one of the few places that you could hear breakdance music being played in the city centre. Carl Kingston, a Radio Aire DJ, would play the records that the teenage clubbers would bring in. Paul recalls that it was mostly boys bringing in the rap and hip hop records, and when they came on typically the girls left the dance floor, preferring the soul and funk records. The Le Phono club underneath the stairs is best known as a goth haunt, but it was where George Evelyn and Kevin Harper from Nightmares On Wax first started to play Chicago house music.
Roxy Ballroom, 9a Merrion St, Leeds LS1 6PQ
Proceed through the Merrion Centre to exit onto Wade Lane, passing the current home of Jumbo Records as you go. Turn right and immediately left onto Merrion Street. Continue downhill to the pedestrianised area.
In 1984, this was a restaurant called Coconut Grove with a nightclub downstairs called Ricky’s. It ran wellrespected jazz nights, hosting big names in jazz such as Acker Bilk. This is where George and Kevin moved their club night to: Downbeat played Chicago house. Although there were other clubs outside the centre, Foxes on Chapeltown Road, for example, that played house, Paul Weston relates that it was the only nightclub in the city centre, apart from the Teen Scene nights, where you could hear that music at that time. Eventually Coconut Grove became The Gallery and hosted the world famous Back to Basics club – a key part of the house music story. Goldie played at Back to Basics and other Leeds DJs who got their start playing in the house music scene, though specifically at Warehouse on Somers Street, were JoJo (Capital Radio) and Adele Roberts (BBC Radio 1).
Head back up Lower Merrion Street and pause on the corner. Next door to the Wrens pub, where what is now student flats, there was a bar called Harveys and Paul recalls that in the late 1980s this bar would let DJs play Black music when few others in the city centre would. Paul DJed hip hop here.
Sela Bar, 20 New Briggate, Leeds LS1 6NU
Turn left down New Briggate and go past The Grand Theatre towards the junction with Headrow.
In 1967, the streets of Leeds echoed to the sound of the steel drum as the first Leeds West Indian Carnival paraded along New Briggate on their way to the Leeds Town Hall, filled with the celebratory spirit of freedom, the energy of defiance against hostility and a resilience to access what their enslaved forbears could not. More on the Carnival below.
In the 1950s Sela Bar was Studio 20, a jazz club that was part of the New Orleans revival. According to Michael Meadowcroft, “There was a real enthusiasm for jazz, and lots of little clubs started popping up everywhere. Leeds had a great jazz scene in those days, you could go to a different club every night of the week.” Studio 20 was owned by mixed-race tuba player, Bob Barclay. Bob had put together, and played tuba in, the Yorkshire Jazz Band (the YJB shared the Cavern stage with The Beatles). The club had cartoons drawn on the wall by YJB member and art student Diz Disley. Because it was open later, any jazz musicians playing gigs in the city would end up at Studio 20. As Michael recalls, ‘“People like Humphrey Lyttelton, Chris Barber and Tubby Hayes all played there. When they came to Leeds for a gig they were usually finished by 10 o’clock and there was nowhere to go. There were no restaurants or cafés open, they could go back to their hotel, but that was it. Then they heard about this jazz club, and, being jazz men, they went along and got up and played.” The jams would go on all night. Sela Bar still has jazz nights so you can come and and listen to the jazz in the same place that Big Bill Broonzy played.
In fact this little area around New Briggate is known for its jazz: the Coconut Grove (Merrion Street) was known for jazz in the 1980s, and the old Odeon (Briggate) cinema hosted many jazz concerts in the 1950s and 1960s, including Duke Ellington. Nowadays, there’s the Domino Club (Grand Arcade), which is a jazz club below a barbers, Belgrave Music Hall (Belgrave Street) and the Howard Assembly Rooms (Grand Theatre) all hosting jazz performances.
Sports Direct, 20 The Headrow, Leeds LS1 6PT, junction with Briggate
Continue down Briggate and pause on the corner with Headrow. What is now Sports Dirct was once the Odeon Cinema. In the 1960s, cinemas were also used as music venues to support the growing live music touring scene, and both Tina Turner and Jimi Hendrix played here. In November 1963 and October 1964 The Beatles played here. People reminiscing on facebook remember how everyone rushed the stage. Ravi Kalsy remembers: “Six brave girls broke through the line of security and climbed over the organ and jumped up onto the stage. One of the six was just an inch away from Paul before one of the security men dragged her away. She was kicked out of the concert, but she ran around to the front of the theatre and begged one of the police to let her back inside.” Others remember the noise of the fans, the knickers being thrown at the stage, and Diane Dale remembers, “After queuing all night on the pavement to get a ticket my friend and I were on the third row from the front. I only remember jelly babies been thrown and don’t recall any girls getting anywhere near them. We did stand on our seats and screamed the whole time. Never heard a word but it was one of the best nights of our life.”
The Beatles were one of the most important bands in music. Not many people know that one of their important early influences was Lord Woodbine, a calypso singer and steel pan player. Lord Woodbine was Harold Phillips who came from Trinidad on SS Windrush. He was hugely influential in the band’s early days, introducing them to new music, including steel pan and r’n’b as part of the Liverpool 8 Caribbean music scene. He gave them stage time in his clubs and, later, acted as the band’s road manager and took them in a rickety van to Hamburg. Woodbine and the other influential and supportive members of the L8 music world have been written out – and in some cases literally photoshopped out – of The Beatles story, but are starting to be restored to their place in the band’s history.
To come back to Leeds, the first chart hit by a homegrown reggae band was a cover of ‘Ob La Di Ob La Da’ by The Bedrocks in 1968. The Bedrocks, a soul, ska and reggae band, formed in Leeds and members came from Jamaica, St Kitts and Monserrat. Drummer Reg Challenger told Melody Maker, “We have all played with other groups before, but never had any success. We’d played in London a couple of times and on one of our gigs, Norman Smith of EMI heard us and liked the band. A few weeks ago, he asked us to come to London, and record a song he heard. We had no money at all. We didn’t eat for the two days we were in London. We used a club called the London cavern to rehearse the Beatles number in and they let us kip down on the floor”. The song reached number 20 in the UK singles chart.
REISS, Victoria Quarter, 26-28 County Arcade, Leeds LS1 6BH
Continue down Briggate and turn left into the County Arcade. At the central point, on your left, is Reiss. Note how the entrance to the shop is set back to create a grand triple doorway. Before becoming a shop, this was the Mecca Locarno Dance Hall (19381970).
In the 1950s, people used to go dancing on their lunchbreaks at the Mecca for 6d, and it was a famous haunt of rock n rollers like The Rolling Stones, and the Leeds United Team. One of the club’s regulars was a young tailor who came to Leeds from Lagos in 1949: David Oluwale. He was a sharp dresser and he loved partying.
King Edward St, Leeds LS1 6AX
With your back to Reiss, walk through the central cut through the arcade, out into King Edward Street.
In 1953, David Oluwale came here to eat at the restaurant of the King Edward Hotel. The night was to change his life forever. After a dispute over the bill the police were called and he was charged with disorderly conduct. The injuries inflicted on him during his arrest were so severe that they caused hallucinations and he spent the next eight years in High Royds Hospital (Menston). On his release, he was unable to find work and became homeless. He was subjected to a campaign of harassment by two police officers (Ellerker and Kitching) including banging his head on the pavement and kicking him whilst he slept. On 18 April 1969The officers beat David in Lands Lane and then chased him, head bleeding, to Leeds Bridge. There the beating continued until he was unconscious, at which point the officers kicked him into the river. On 4th May 1969, David’s body was retrieved from the River Aire. An inquiry by Scotland Yard found that he had been subject to “systemic, varied, and brutal” violence at the hands of at least two officers, often in the presence of other officers who made no effort to intervene.” Both officers were jailed for assault.
The life of David Oluwale, and the horror of the police brutality, is now commemorated in a blue plaque on Leeds Bridge, and in the sculpture Hibiscus Rising by Yinka Shonibare (Meadow Lane).
Albion Place/ Lands Lane, Leeds, LS1 6PU
Turn around and follow King Edward Street across Briggate and up Albion Place. Pause at the crossing with Lands Lane.
Before The Core shopping centre was built, there was an amphitheatre here. This was where now legendary Victorian circus owner and performer Pablo Fanque held his circuses. Pablo Fanque (18101871) was the first known circus owner of African heritage in Britain. He was second generation, and light in skin colour, but still identified in his lifetime for his colour. You may well have heard of him:
“For the benefit of Mr. Kite / There will be a show tonight on trampoline The Hendersons will all be there / Late of Pablo Fanque's Fair, what a scene Over men and horses, hoops and garters / Lastly through a hogshead of real fire”
John Lennon saw an old poster for the circus and used it to write the lyrics of ‘Being for Benefit of Mr Kite!’ On The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Not many people know that Pablo and his wife Susannah are buried in Leeds, in what is now St George’s Field (University of Leeds). Susannah was a talented performer and the backbone of Pablo Fanque’s Circus Royal’s success. Sadly in 1848, there was a tragic accident: the circus’s gallery seating collapsed onto the box office, where Susannah was counting the night’s takings. Many people were injured and Susannah was killed. When he died in 1871, Pablo was returned to Leeds to be buried with his first wife.
Dortmund Square, Headrow, Leeds, LS2 8RE
Turn right up Lands Lane, left along Headrow and cross to see The Dortmund Drayman sculpture by German sculptor Arthur Schulze-Engels (a matching one stands in Leeds’ twin city, Dortmund).
Here in Dortmund Square, in the run up to Christmas 1984, a stage was erected to celebrate Christmas and serenade the late-night shoppers. Radio Aire DJ Carl Kingston was one of the DJs and, like with his Teen Scene club spots, he was happy to play the records the teenagers brought. Result? Breakdance battles on the stage in the middle of the city.
Paul Weston remembers of the breakdance battles: “I can't explain the atmosphere. There was always a big crowd round you judging you, in a circle that got smaller and smaller. Sometimes you'd be breakdancing in pitch black from the circle around you. With that and the rivalry, the atmosphere was electric and you could really got caught up in the buzz. If you got too crowded whilst breaking, a breakdancer would pick up a smaller breakdancer and swing them round to move everybody back by hitting their feet in their faces.” Paul says, “I thought it was just us, but talking to other people, they did the same thing in Manchester.”
Travelling up Headrow, you are now following part of the original Leeds West Indian Carnival route as it came up from Chapeltown to its turnaround point at the Town Hall. The city centre streets would vibrate with the sound of the steel bands. In those days (1960s/70s) the carnival floats were flatbeds that were pulled by hand all the way up the hill from Chapeltown!
Leeds Town Hall, Headrow, Leeds, LS1 3AD
Continue west along Headrow until you reach the Town Hall, opened by Queen Victoria in 1858.
On 25th November 1873, Fisk Jubilee Singers came to perform at Leeds Town Hall (and other places across Yorkshire), all the way from Nashville. Fisk University opened in 1866 and was the first American university to provide liberal arts course to students irrespective of colour. Fisk Singers played Leeds multiple times and they were hugely popular, frequently selling out.
Joe Williams, Leeds performer and researcher says to think of ‘moving from the atrium through to the large hall with a good-sized stage and a large pipe-organ, and imagine, a group of African American singers being the first to introduce Europe to authentic gospel music. Songs like ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ was adopted into British culture as The Fisk Jubilee Singers raised funds for their university in Tennessee for those recently emancipated from slavery. In fact, returning several times on their tour, by popular demand, you may be surprised to hear that they raised more money in Yorkshire than anywhere in Europe and named a room in their university after William Wilberforce in gratitude. Well, there goes that stereotype about stingy Yorkshire folk!’
Note also, that in 1901 Leeds Festival commissioned mixed-race composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor to write a piece: ‘The Blind Girl of Castel Cuille (cantata) op. 43’, which debuted at the Leeds Festival that year.
In the mid-1960s, the United Caribbean Association (UCA) ran West Indian dances with steel bands here at the Town Hall. The UCA’s organiser, Arthur France, then led in organising the first Leeds West Indian Carnival was held in 1967. It paraded from Potternewton Park to the Town Hall and back, incorporated big drum and fife bands, string bands, steel bands, calypso and soca, and included steel pan and calypso contests. The first Calypso King was Artie Davis from St Kitts with his song ‘St. Kitts Is My Borning Land’. The lyrics celebrated the Carnival, Arthur France and Black Power. The St Christopher Steel Band, from Birmingham, won the first Steel Pan Contest with ‘Elizabethan Serenade’, right here at the Town Hall
The significance of Carnival coming to the Town Hall must not be overlooked. As Joe says, a good carnival gives revellers a sense of being a free spirit, a way to be yourself when too often you feel invisible. “We didn’t feel we were part of history. We didn’t feel we were included except as part of incarceration or sectioning.” Coming to the Town Hall, the symbol of the city, was ‘a reclaiming of our place in democracy’. Carnival, with its roots in slavery, is a celebration of emancipation.
Leeds Black History Walk
https://heritagecornerleeds.com/
Leeds City Museum
https://museumsandgalleries.leeds.gov.uk/leeds-city-museum-tgcr
A Hip Hop Journey: 50 Years Of Kulture
https://www.britishhiphop.co.uk/news/latest/a-hip-hop-journey-50-years-of-kulture.html
Bob Marley and The Wailers live at Leeds Polytechnic 1973
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E4cZ6gtoo0
Rock Against Racism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR01x9waNqI
Chapeltown Uprising 1981
https://secretlibraryleeds.net/2019/10/11/the-1981-uprising/
Breakdancing
https://streetsounds.co.uk/morgankhan.html
Jazz and Studio 20
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1BZtLbMRKzHoGB7WvkYkLJ?si=4M6D6z5XReyuKJOx4pPooQ
Lord Woodbine
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/lord-woodbine-the-forgotten-sixthbeatle-2015140.html
The Bedrocks
https://online.fliphtml5.com/hzcqx/fvir/#p=11
Fisk Singers
https://www.africansinyorkshireproject.com/fisk-jubilee-singers-part-one.html