Pauline Black was the lead singer of the multi-racial ska combination The Selecter, affectionately referred to as the First Rude Girl of Ska. Formed originally in 1977 in Coventry in the county of Essex by Neol Davies and John Bradbury, Black was drafted into The Selecter by Davies after Davies had seen her performing in a local club. “I’d spent two years teaching guitar and playing in folk clubs, which were the main outlets if you were a female performer,” Black says. Black, who had been adopted into a white family in the late ‘50s, had developed an interest in reggae music, an interest that burgeoned as punk emerged to confront the dominant musical order. “I grew up in Essex, and there was a bit of underground interest in reggae, which a lot of people had been introduced to through Bob Marley,” Black says.
Black’s childhood identity was complex and confusing for a young black girl. Her parents were infected by the same racial prejudices that The Selecter and The Specials would come to challenge. “I was adopted into a white working class family, and they had relatively well developed racist beliefs,” Black says. “I was a little black girl growing up in that environment – although they weren’t racist to me.” (In a neat local angle, Black would eventually trace her birth mother to Wollongong, and discover a half sister in Sydney.)
In the ‘60s, Black’s political world became clearer when she turned on the television and saw the segregation dramas being played out in the southern states of the United States. Black turned to folk music, before she joined The Selecter. Not long after Black joined as the band’s vocalist, The Selecter released its debut album Too Much Pressure, featuring the singles On My Radio and Missing Words. The Selecter became hot 2-Tone property, participating in many of the label’s legendary tours. “Part of the band’s agenda was very much embracing 2-Tone as an attitude, and not fashion – it was very much anti-racist,” Black says.
In 1982, The Selecter called it a day (“the usual things, like musical differences,” Black says), and Black pursued other musical and theatrical interests (including a guest spot on The Bill in the late ‘80s). “The ‘80s was a time to go away from music – synth pop didn’t really do a lot for me,” Black says. Black reformed The Selecter in 1991, playing sporadically until the present day. “It was a chance to get back to making music with people that I respected,” Black says. (Neol Davies left not long after the original reunion, though original member Arthur ‘Gaps’ Hendrickson will perform with The Selecter on its upcoming tour.)
While it would take until 1997 before the Conservative Party would lose power (Margaret Thatcher having been deposed by her own party in 1990), Black feels The Selecter did make a difference. “I think we possibly educated a generation,” Black says. “People come up to me and say that 2-Tone would them up to racism. And while things aren’t perfect in Britain, the idea of having an anti-racist stance has morphed into something to be proud of.”
BY PATRICK EMERY
