Was Sister Rosetta Tharpe responsible for Oasis? Discuss…
- David Nolan
- Aug 20
- 5 min read
Punk musician and arts journalist Stephanie Phillips’ new book states that there’d be no such thing as ‘alternative’ music without Black artists - yet Black people are often shunned by the conservative worlds of genres like punk and metal. We Were Here: A History of Black People & Alternative Music guides us through the myriad influences generated by everyone from Sister Rosetta Tharpe to Poly Styrene, via Phil Lynott and ESG. She explains why ‘Blackness is inherently punk’ and talks big coats with Cult Manchester’s David Nolan.
Cult Manchester: When I saw your book, I thought, surely someone's written this already. But no, they hadn’t. What does that tell us, do you think?
Stephanie Phillips: It’s something I'd wanted to write about for a long time. I'm a music journalist and I've been heavily involved in punk scenes. So, it kind of makes sense. I was doing research on previous books and most of them have been in America. There's one called Rip It Up by Kandia Crazy Horse. There’s What Are You Doing Here? by Laina Dawes about Black women in the metal scene. But outside of those few things, there wasn't really anything from a UK writer. And there wasn't really anything very recent. So, it felt like it was really necessary and it kind of reflected how I grew up in the punk scene; although there were Black people there, there was never any conversation around it. There was never anyone critically analysing this sort of this music and this scene and why we're here and what it means.
CM: There’s a hell of a pull quote from you on the inner sleeve of the book: ‘Blackness is inherently punk’. What do you mean by that?
SP: Being Black in a white majority society - in the UK and US at least - it feels like to exist in daily society… you're already punk because you're already an outsider. And to succeed, you're always having to rebel against how you're told to conform. Growing up as a Black woman in the UK in the noughties, you make yourself smaller to fit within a very small, confined idea of what a Black woman should be in the UK. You're always existing in that kind of state, as a Black person in these societies, because that's what you're pressed into.
CM: How does Manchester fare here in terms of representation, recognition… or just providing good tunes?
SP: I would say The Haçienda scene - there's ESG, they came over from the US and were a part of that [They were spotted by Tony Wilson in New York and recorded with Martin Hannett in Manchester. The session produced ‘UFO’, one of the most sampled tracks in history]. In the 80s there was definitely a big boom in alternative bands with Black members in them in the post punk scene.
CM: One of the key figures in the book is Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Famously, she played a very rainy show at Wilbraham Road railway station in Whalley Range, Manchester in 1964 that was filmed by Granada TV. For a lot of people this would have been the first time they saw her, strutting down the station platform in a big coat. The late, great Manchester writer CP Lee said that Sister Rosetta’s performance was far more influential than the Sex Pistols at the Lesser Free Trade Hall because of all the TV viewers who saw her. She was extraordinary, wasn't she?
SP: She was unique even for the time and it's really interesting to look back and see her perform and also to see the way that she played guitar. It was very different to the way a lot of people were playing guitar at the time. It was mostly lead guitar, picking out these very melodic, lead guitar stylings, adding these little flourishes over the vocals and over the song. She was a huge star. She was basically a pop star of her day and definitely influenced a lot of American rock stars. They knew about her songs and were able to take in that inspiration of this Black, gospel woman playing guitar.
But also, conversely, I think it would have influenced hugely the UK scene at the time when she came over. What we know from the 60s and 70s, is that a lot of UK artists were heavily looking over to the US and would have taken what she was bringing as an African American star. You can only imagine who was inspired to do their own thing and start their own band just by seeing Sister Rosetta.
CM: Maybe her strutting around with a huge coat on was very influential for Manchester people. Because we do love to strut around in a big coat.
SP: That’s true. Maybe that’s what led to the Gallagher brothers!
CM: The other person we like to lay claim to is Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy, as he went to school in Manchester when his mum ran a hotel - also in Whalley Range. He was probably better at his job than anybody else, which was being the frontman of a rock band.
SP: It was interesting that he was leading the way as that very hard rock, masculine frontman. But in different parts of that scene this was always seen as quite a white, male job. But he was kind of there, really devoted and really caring about showcasing his love of his Irish side, and he was the very proud of being Irish. Also, he was so proud about being mixed race and being Black. And that was never something that he saw as a negative. Almost because he was brought up in isolation in a weird way. There was so little immigration in Ireland. I think he was literally the only Black person in his town, but it seemed to kind of work out in a weird way, where people didn't necessarily look down on him. It was just kind of… that’s Phil. It's amazing to see his legacy and what he was able to achieve and his stance - very proto-hard rock frontman.
CM: Sometimes music writers are accused of just looking at the past, curating it and maybe polishing it a little bit. What about the future? How's that looking?
SP: I tried to look at where alternative music is trending towards. For a lot of young people, like Gen Z, it seems like there's definitely a huge increase in Black people who don't seem to see anything wrong with being Black and in a punk scene or in a metal scene or in indie or anything like that. It does seem quite removed from even when I was growing up in the noughties and you were told, straight down the line, this is not for you. So that's a really huge improvement, and I think that has come through the popularity of the Afropunk Festival, as well as Black Lives Matter influencing a lot of things beyond just the civil rights that they were asking for. Making Black people realise, how do they actually want to live? How do we want to express ourselves in this world at this time? It looks like alternative music is trending more towards hybrid genres… pop punk with hip-hop or grime with punk. That kind of feels like something that feels more expansive for a lot of young people when they’re being brought up with so many different genres at once and not having to be restricted by what's just on a CD or what you can learn from one music magazine. It’s very diverse and I think that's very exciting.
We Were Here: A History of Black People & Alternative Music will be published on 25 August 2026 by Faber & Faber. Buy it here.
