Northern Soul Scene

The northern soul scene is a dance-based music culture that originated in the English North and Midlands in the early 1970s. It still thrives today with a mix of sixty-year-olds and several generations of new converts, and its celebration of 1960s soul has an international following.



This co-produced book brings together newly commissioned essays together with pivotal earlier articles that have defined the field so far. These chapters are interspersed with key journalistic articles, evocative photographs, and interviews with the directors of northern soul-themed films. This anthology is the first to provide a wide variety of perspectives on the history and contemporary nature of the scene, and creates a forum for vibrant dialogue and debate amongst academic researchers, students and those immersed in the scene. Representations of the scene from different media, and different historical locations, are juxtaposed to construct a rich and diverse statement about the music, people, places and practices that constitute the northern soul scene in the UK and beyond.

Sarah Raine is a Research Fellow at Birmingham City University. She is co-Managing Editor of Riffs: Experimental writing on popular music, Review Editor and special issue Guest Editor (2018) for IASPM@Journal, and the Network Coordinator for Jazz & Everyday Aesthetics. Tim Wall is Professor of Radio and Popular Music Studies, and Associate Dean for Research in the Faculty of Arts, Design and Media at Birmingham City University. His publications include the second edition of Studying Popular Music Culture. Nicola Watchman Smith is Head of Higher Education at Newcastle College University Centre and a cultural sociologist and researcher. She has published widely on northern soul, including chapters in The Ashgate Research Companion to Popular Musicology (2009) and Ageing and Youth Cultures: Music, Style and Identity (2012).