Sonic Borderscapes: Popular Music, Pirate Radio, and Belonging in Black British Writing in the 1990s

This article addresses the role of music and broadcast radio as elements in the construction of borderscapes, spaces of cultural construction and identity negotiation, in three black British novels published in the 1990 s, namely Diran Adebayo’s Some Kind of Black (1996), Karline Smith’s Moss Side Massive (1994/1998), and Courttia Newland’s Society Within (1999/2000). The article argues that the novels use black popular music and pirate (community) radio stations as means of constructing black identities, belonging, and communities in the conditions of the borderscape where hegemonic and resistant identifications come into contact with each other. Furthermore, the borderscape constructed can be seen as a sonic borderscape owing to the significant role allotted to music and radio in the novels. While music plays a particularly significant role at the level of the individual and contributes to the making of a distinct identity and difference, their becoming, the specific function given to community radio in these novels is to construct communities of belonging.1