History is made at night

In our search for the origins of rave , we have previously looked at the revivalist and trad jazz scenes in London from the late 1940s to th...

Iranian police detained 80 young men and women for "lustful pleasure-seeking" activities at an illegal concert, Tehran's chief...

Flesh and Stone: the Body and the City in Western Civilization (1994)by Richard Sennett ‘is a history of the city told through people’s bod...

Most of the obituaries to Lena Horne (1917-2010), who died last weekend, mention her involvement in the civil rights movement. But what is ...

Photographer Chris Steele-Perkins has a new book out, England my England , featuring 40 years of his documentary photography, with an exhib...

Patrice Lumumba (1925-1961) was a leading figure in the struggle for the independence of Congo from the Belgian Empire. He briefly became fi...

Continuing our series on pop stars with a sounder grasp of migration politics than has been seen so far in the British elections, good to se...

RIP Lynn Redgrave - here she is in the great 1966 London movie Georgy Girl . The soundtrack song was by The Seekers. And here she is danci...

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (1890-1964), lived to see many May Days as a key figure in the US workers movement for more than 50 years. In 1939, ...

Last night I floated the idea of voting for Amerie in the UK elections (even though she's not standing!), on the basis that her critiqu...

So why put up a video for Amerie's 1 Thing at this late stage in the day? Well it's a great track and why can't I a put up a go...

I posted last year on the 30 th anniversary of the death of Blair Peach, killed during the anti-fascist demonstration in Southall , West Lo...

The search for the linguistic origins of 'rave' and 'raver' continues. Jon, who does the interesting Alsatia history site ,...

From Waayaha Cusub (from Reuters Nairobi, 9 April 2010): For centuries, Somalis used poetry and songs to pass protest messages to powerful r...

'Young people who gathered to celebrate spring by blowing bubbles at an annual flash mob in central St. Petersburg were attacked by a gr...

Kind of fascinated by the politics of the prom, that seasonal culture war on the dancefloor . We don't have anything quite like it in B...

'I was born Malcolm McLaren just after the war in 1946, a war baby, a baby boomer as my generation's come to be known, born on the ...

London Pirate Frequencies is a nice short film presented by Matt Mason, tracing the story of free radio from the 1950s/60s forts in the Tha...

We've previously covered the campaign against the draconian new immigration restrictions on musicians and artists entering the UK, but ...

Interesting article from Australia on clubs scanning ID and even taking fingerprints as a requirement of entry. I am aware that some clubs i...

People all over the world look forward to going out on Friday night, seemingly in Nepal school students can't wait that long and bunk of...

With Spring in England in full effect, the outdoor party season is taking off. I know that some parties are an inconvenience to neighbours (...

In previous posts on the origins of rave, ravers and raving , we have established that the use of these terms in relation to parties goes ba...

A short lived episode in the history of pirate radio was Radio Sutch, initiated by English rock'n'roller Screaming Lord Sutch (1940-...