Say Manchester music and a familiar collection of names usually follows. Say Liverpool and an even more dominant story can get underway. Both cities have musical histories so extensively celebrated that parts of them risk disappearing behind the celebration.
On Wednesday 11 November, a concert at the BBC Philharmonic Studio in Salford is going to bring a different selection of voices and songs to the foreground. There'll be music associated with Manchester’s Sweet Sensation, Cleopatra and Sweet Female Attitude, alongside Liverpool’s The Real Thing. Rowetta and The Real Thing are among the special guests joining the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, with Chris Cameron conducting and vocalists from across the North West taking part.
Called The Music is Black: Live, the evening will be recorded for BBC Radio 3’s Friday Night is Music Night, with broadcast scheduled for Friday 20 November.
Its significance lies partly in the company these songs will keep. Bringing them together invites us to hear connections across generations and genres - and to consider how fully Black musicians feature in the stories the North West tells about itself.
%20%C2%A9%20Martin%20Bone.jpg)
There's a useful starting point in two records separated by less than two years. Sweet Sensation’s Sad Sweet Dreamer reached number one in 1974. The Real Thing’s You to Me Are Everything followed in 1976, spending three weeks at the top of the UK singles chart. These were records at the centre of British popular listening.
Both feature in the planned Salford programme. Hearing them together makes a regional point as well as a musical one: Manchester and Liverpool were producing Black musical success while the histories most often associated with those cities were still being written.
The Real Thing’s roots make that history even more specific. The group was established in Toxteth in 1972, with a musical lineage reaching back through the Liverpool vocal group The Chants and Eddy Amoo, older brother of Chris. Place matters here. A broad celebration of British music becomes more revealing when we can place its makers in particular streets, neighbourhoods and communities.
The programme then moves through other musical generations. A Cleopatra medley is planned, while Sweet Female Attitude’s Flowers will receive an orchestral arrangement by Katie Chatburn. Alongside them sit Omar’s There’s Nothing Like This and There’s Much Love in the World, Dee C Lee’s See the Day, the Shapeshifters’ Lola’s Theme and Shirley Bassey’s Diamonds Are Forever.
That wider selection gives the North West material a national context. It also suggests an evening with room for pleasure: recognition, a remembered chorus, the anticipation of hearing what musicians will do with a song you thought you knew.
%20(1).jpg)
Orchestral versions of popular songs present an interesting creative challenge. The original recordings already have their own musical authority. Their character lives in particular voices, the placement of a beat, a bass line, the space between phrases.
The interest is in how an arrangement responds to those details. Strings might draw attention to an overlooked harmony; brass might bring a rhythmic exchange into sharper focus. Equally, a large ensemble needs to know when to leave room. The test will be whether the performances allow us to hear something fresh while retaining the individuality that made the songs matter.
Cameron brings substantial experience to that work. His career includes musical direction for George Michael and arrangements for artists including Tina Turner and Take That. The announced arrangers for Salford are Callum Au, Cameron, Robin Wallington, Chatburn, Nic Raine and Jules Buckley.
The presence of Rowetta and The Real Thing gives the event another dimension. This is a programme involving artists who are part of the musical history being celebrated, performing alongside an orchestra based in the region. Their participation offers the possibility of an exchange between musical experiences, rather than a history simply being presented on their behalf.
The concert forms part of the BBC’s The Music is Black season and its collaboration with V&A East Museum, inspired by the museum’s inaugural exhibition, The Music is Black: A British Story. The exhibition explores 125 years of Black music-making in Britain, placing music alongside questions of identity, influence and the conditions in which creativity develops.
Salford provides a Northern point of connection to that wider project. The performance will begin in a studio at MediaCity and travel through a national radio broadcast. Songs rooted on our patch will be heard within a broader account of British cultural life.
One concert clearly can't provide a complete history. Its selection can, however, prompt a better set of questions. Which musicians are repeatedly named when a city celebrates its cultural achievements? Which songs do we know without knowing much about the people who made them? What becomes audible when we give those artists sustained attention?
For the North West, those questions are worth carrying beyond a single evening. Its Black musical history belongs within the region’s everyday understanding of itself: in the stories it teaches, the artists it supports and the music it chooses to remember.
On 11 November, the immediate invitation is to listen. There is plenty here to enjoy - and plenty to hear more closely.
Listening information: The Music is Black: Live will be recorded at the BBC Philharmonic Studio, MediaCity, Salford, on Wednesday 11 November 2026. Broadcast is scheduled for Friday 20 November on BBC Radio 3’s Friday Night is Music Night. Programme and artists are subject to change.
Header image: The Real Thing © Martin Bone
