Black History Month Resources

Black composers, performers, producers and musical communities have shaped music across centuries and genres. Here are 10 starting points for curriculum music, composition, performance and music technology, for use in October and all year round.

Who’s in your music curriculum?

Each card follows the same shape: what the musician changed, something to listen to, the curriculum hooks it supports, and one short classroom activity.

Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges

What changed?
Virtuoso violinist and composer who led the Concert des Amateurs, one of the leading orchestras in Paris, and wrote violin concertos, symphonies, string quartets and opera.
Listen: Symphony in G major, Op. 11 No. 1

TRY KS3-5: Compare a movement with Mozart or Haydn being studied at the same time. What musical conventions do they share?

George Bridgetower

What changed?
Violinist who gave the first performance of Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 9 with Beethoven at the piano in Vienna in 1803. Beethoven first dedicated the sonata to him.
Listen: Beethoven, Violin Sonata No. 9 in A, Op. 47 (first movement)

TRY KS3-4: Explore the role of the performer in bringing a composition to life, and Bridgetower’s connection with Beethoven.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

What changed?
Croydon-born composer whose cantata Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast (1898) became one of the most performed choral works in Britain during his lifetime.

Listen: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, or Petite Suite de Concert

TRY KS3-4: Listen for how the melody moves between orchestral families.

Florence Price

What changed?
Her Symphony No. 1 in E minor was performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1933, the first symphony by a Black woman played by a major American orchestra.

Listen: Symphony No. 1 in E minor, third movement: ‘Juba Dance’

TRY KS3-4: Identify how different musical traditions coexist in concert music, then use a short rhythmic or melodic idea as a composition stimulus.

Errollyn Wallen

What changed?
Belize-born British composer of opera, orchestral, chamber and vocal music. In 2024 she became Master of the King’s Music.
Listen: Mighty River (2007) was written in 2007 to mark the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act

TRY KS3-4: Take a small musical idea and transform it through rhythm, texture or instrumentation.

Nubya Garcia

What changed?
London saxophonist, composer and bandleader at the centre of the contemporary UK jazz scene. Her 2020 debut album Source was shortlisted for the 2021 Mercury Prize.

Listen: Source’, from the album Source (2020)

TRY KS2-3: Build a repeating groove and give pupils a limited set of notes over which to improvise

Ray Mighty / Smith & Mighty

What changed?
As DJ and producer in Smith & Mighty, Ray Mighty connected reggae, dub, hip-hop, soul, breakbeats, sampling and remix culture in the early Bristol Sound.

Listen: Smith & Mighty, ‘Anyone?’ (1988)

TRY KS3-4: Take a simple vocal or instrumental phrase and explore space, bass, repetition, layering and effects.

Roni Size / Reprazent

What changed?
Bristol producer whose group Reprazent combined live double bass, drums and vocals with programmed breakbeats. Their album New Forms won the 1997 Mercury Prize.

Listen: Reprazent, ‘Brown Paper Bag’ (1997)

TRY KS2-3: Build a drum-and-bass track: programme a breakbeat, create a bass line and add one live instrumental element.

Black history is a driver of music technology history…

… shaping how instruments, reproduction tools, and electronic soundscapes are invented, used, and reinvented.

Jamaican sound-system culture and the building of powerful homemade amplifiers and speakers, to sampling, jungle, UK garage and grime, Black musicians, producers and communities have repeatedly found new ways to create, manipulate, record and share sound.

Explore how a sound system works, investigate sampling and looping, trace the journey from reggae and dub to jungle and grime, or challenge pupils to use music technology to create a new track inspired by what they’ve discovered.

How can technology change the kind of music we make?
Why did communities build their own sound systems?
How did sampling allow musicians to transform existing sounds?
How has affordable music software changed who gets to make and release music?
Which sounds and technologies are young people reinventing today?