Songs, City Life and G Folk: an evening of music and conversation with Hak Baker

Musician and singer Hak Baker talks to sociologist Les Back about the power of songs as a way of understanding city life.

Hak talks to Les about his early years as a young rapper, his time as a chorister in Southwark Cathedral, learning the guitar and developing his unique musical style - which he calls G(uvnor) Folk.  The best folk songs make the listeners inhabit the world of the characters within them. Hak Baker’s music is like this, and he makes us confront the joy, pain and particularly the complexity of the lives of young men. Hak makes us walk in their shoes as they try to make their way in an unforgiving city that judges them so harshly. The conversation will be combined with Hak performing his songs and also some choices of his favourite records. 

Hosted by the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racialisation and Racism