Great Black Music

Booking is required

⚠ Take your wired earphones with you, they are necessary for the visit. (no bluetooth!!)

Mandinka griots, Mississippi bluesmen playing melancholic tunes, New Orleans bars, Manhattan clubs, Yoruba rhythms, Afrobeat, Maloya chants, samba… from the ska and reggae from Kingston to the hip-hop from the Bronx: the voice, the tempo, the rhythm, the untamed soul of millions of deported slaves has created an incredibly rich musical history.

Four hundred years of injustice haven’t stopped creativity and freedom. Black music has shaped the pop culture all around the globe and transcends ethnic and nationalist ideas. That music is at the same time African, American, Caribbean and European. It crossed continents and centuries. Each generation remembers a specific tune and all the emotions that came with it, a certain groove. Les Halles recreate the Great Black Music exhibition to tell this extraordinary story.

How can you do justice to the thousands of artists that live in our memory? We can’t cover them all, so we have decided to cover a few sensorial and immersive themes. We looked at geography and history and went through hundreds of audio and video documents, films and images to create an interactive story. This exhibition is not academic but is about feelings. Like Adarno said: ‘Knowledge has no other light than that of redemption relating to the world: everything else is exhausted in reconstruction and remains simple technique.’

*Reservation required
- Online with visa and mastercard payment
- On site with maestro/bancontact with pre-booking required on 02 218 21 07 or on reservation@halles.be (Please note that there is no cash payment possible)

Post visit access