Museums are using music to map human migration

When the V&A East museum opened its doors in Stratford, it abandoned the traditional habit of hanging instruments on walls like silent relics. Instead, its inaugural exhibition uses 125 years of Black music to map the literal movement of people across the globe. By following the arrival of jazz in the 1920s and the post-war Caribbean migration that brought reggae to London, the museum treats a bassline not just as art, but as a historical record of social resistance and survival.