Last week it was announced that resident Dancehall DJ Robbo Ranks and RnB DJ CJ Beatz have been axed from 1Xtra. It’s part of reshuffle that BBC Controller Ben Cooper has put down to "budget cuts" but interestingly the station is keeping and promoting club DJs such as Mistajam, Monki and Friction. The daytime 1Xtra playlist is dominated by house producers like Gorgon City, Kove and Secondcity. Similarly last year Capital Xtra, formerly Choice FM, lost nearly all of its specialist black music programming. Soca, gospel and grime were replaced with a dance music focused playlist with shows for Hardwell and Ministry Of Sound. Out with the bashment and in with the Calvin Harris.
There has been much grumbling about the transformation of these stations. In the beginning Choice FM was launched as a black community station and, at the height of Choice’s success, prominent forms of black music in the UK enjoyed prime-time placement. With regular talk shows such as the Schumann Shuffle, hosted by comedian Geoff Schumann, that discussed issues facing the black community: from youth in education to black history, to police and community relations. There was a dedicated and ever growing callership as Schumann featured black community activists, workers, and MPs such as Dianne Abbott, Gus John and Rosemary Campbell. The message was clear; this was more than just a radio station playing the hits, it was about identity.
This is is a far cry from these stations as they are now. Capital Xtra and 1Xtra don’t even use the term "Black music" to describe their output. In 2010, 1Xtra dropped the historic "Love Black Music, Love 1Xtra" strap line in favour of the neutrally inclusive “Xtra Hip-hop, Xtra R&B”. Capital Xtra launched with the slogan "Dance. Urban. UK". I understand that with a drastically falling listenership they want to appeal to as many people as possible but I can't help feeling a part of history is being erased by this conscious courting of the mainstream. I wonder what the ramifications of this will be on the Black British musical identity - is there even such a thing these days as the Black British musical identity?
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In each of these examples, commercialisation meant danceification - 4/4 beats and bubblegum choruses. That music is now being sold back to us by the likes of Capital Xtra and Tinie Tempah as a modernised replacement for what went before. But it’s rootless airport music, with no ties to Black British culture.