In 2013, the good people at US-based independent label Secretly Group hired me as a fresh-faced, straight-out-of-the-Midlands graduate.

Three years later, my face is less fresh as I find myself holed up in sweaty east London pub-cum-venue most nights, waiting for bands to start, often 15 minutes after their agreed set time. In those 15 minutes, the smell of cheap alcohol becomes neutralised and I chat to the journalists I’ve invited along, trying to be as friendly as possible in the hope that my charm will sway them into giving my band a four-star review that doesn’t feature any complaints about technical difficulties.

In the few short minutes before the band comes on, the stage lights illuminate the crowd. It’s only then I become aware that I am a black woman in an overwhelmingly white place. “I’m probably the only black woman here,” I’ll think, and suddenly the whole place feels like an anxiety dream in which I turn up to work completely naked and call my boss “Mum”.

When someone asks a question about toilet roll at a gig, they mean: 'I take it you work here because you're black?'

This feeling of outsiderness is something Solange Knowles recently experienced at a Kraftwerk gig, along with her black husband, black child and child’s friend. She claims she was targeted by a group of four white women who shouted at her to “sit down”, before they threw half-eaten limes at her. In response to this incident, Knowles wrote an essay about isolation, describing the experience of being a person of colour in “predominately white spaces”.



I’ve never been pelted with limes but during my time in the music industry I’ve felt the white micro-aggressions that speak far louder than words. Never misjudge my intuition in knowing that when a white, east London Corbynista with a serious case of vocal fry asks me a question like: “Why’s there no toilet roll?” what that actually means is: “I take it you work here because you’re … black?” Or when I’m asked: “Why are you at this [insert any indie band] show?” and I explain that it’s because I do their press, I know what they’re really asking is: “Why don’t you do press for someone black, because you’re black?” It is as if my race inherently makes me underqualified.

It’s not like I didn’t know what I was getting into. My love for alternative music started as teenager in the midst of an identity crises. As one of few black people in my school, and as a black girl who read alternative music magazines but never saw any black girls in them, I found solace in reading the works of black writers who wrote about the music I loved.

One was Britt Julious. While all of her writing is phenomenal, one article in particular resonated with me when I became a music publicist. Following an incident in which she was asked “What’s a black girl doing here?” at in indiepop show, it led to a deeper exploration of what it means to be black and breaching the boundaries. This birthed Blackfork – her annual headcount of black people she sees at Pitchfork festival, Chicago.

A friend and I did a similar thing at NOS Primavera Sound this year (we counted “seven to 12” black people, including myself, across two days). “The annual count has nothing to do with the festival itself,” Julious says. “I do not fault Pitchfork for creating the audience that it does. Rather, this was about what it means to be black and whether or not I was fitting in.”

For my parents, speaking their mind at work was an aggression, whereas for white people it was just an opinion

How then do I forge my sense of belonging and find a way to become indispensable in a white world that seeks to dispose non-white people for its survival – without losing who I am? How to own my black woman-ness, without feeling alone or defeated? What does my existence mean, right now, at this indie show with a crowd that’s 95% white? My parents never shied away from the difficulties they faced in the corporate world: for them, speaking their mind was an aggression, whereas for white people it was just an opinion. Silence and subservience won’t help me because the issue is my mere occupation in their space – in the world of media and arts. So I’ll continue to reply to micro-aggressions with my very own (“Why don’t you ask someone that works here?” normally works). I’ll continue to go to alternative shows right until the Tories shut every single venue down.

I’ll make no apologies for who I am, and for being where I’m meant to be. Stood in a sweaty east London pub-cum-venue, waiting 15 minutes for a band to start.