Michael McMillan
The West Indian Front Room		The Beauty Shop

Oral Histories in an Ethnographic Context

As a practitioner using theatre, performance, installation and publication I have always been interesting in oral histories in my work, because I suppose I am fascinated by what went before as a clue to the present and a framing of the future. Moreover, given my migrant background, which is British born of Caribbean heritage, I grew up with learning three languages: the creole spoken by my parents as a fusion of an English lexicon and an African grammar; the Jamaican English spoken on the streets of Hackney and around London and the London English spoken at school. My father was also a storyteller and would entertain us as children with tales of his adventures as deep river diver in the Guyanese rain forest looking for diamonds, Jumbie (spirits) stories on the island of St. Vincent, where his was born and grew up and his experiences of arriving in England as an immigrant.

Language is also corporeal in the sense that it is also expressed through the body. For example, a group of black people chatting on the street are perceived by English people as about to start fighting, when all they are doing is expressing themselves in an animated style, which is the nature of language as used by people of African descent. Then there is the notion of that RP (Received Pronunciation) in terms of English language should be spoken without the top lip moving and accusation in English drama schools that they actors to be dead from the neck down.

Consequently, my engagement with oral history is not simply the content, but the form as there are sounds by virtue of the creole language, which is essentially oral and not text based that is invisible and hidden in mainstream popular culture, unless some liberal box is being ticked about cultural diversity. Also my approach as an interviewer with the subject/s recounting their oral testimonies is that I transcend the conventional objective position and share my own experience as a means of generating trust with the interviewee. This may break with oral history conventional practice, but I believe that the observer does affect the object of study that is being observed. Moreover, the interview/interviewee is a private relationship and I am being trusted with personal information and therefore ethnically I should be as open and honest about my own aims, objectives and motives.

As to the specific projects where I have used an oral history methodology as described it is worth mentioning The Black Boy Pub & Other Stories; the black experience in High Wycombe (Wycombe District Council, 1997), which I edited. This publication emerged from a yearlong writers residency in a town where I was born and grew up until I was ten years old. A core component in the book was to document the stories of West Indian migrants especially from St. Vincent whose personal narratives are usually invisible in the archives of Post World War British history. It was not only important to share their experiences of before and after arrival in England, but in transcribing these audio interviews to reflect the language in the way it had been told to me.

The second project in which oral history had a significant role was the exhibition The West Indian Front Room at the Geffrye Museum (2005-06). The focus of this material was centred on 2nd generation Black British experience of the front room and how in the restricted access to this ‘special room’ and the prescribed social behaviour it signified religious moral discipline of 1st generation West Indian migrant parents. Moreover, as the process of intergenerational contestations over identity began to take shape, the formality of the front room shifted as well as its aesthetics in terms of material used to dress it. And since these issues were embodied in various iconic objects used to dress the front room, it became the focus of the oral history interviews that looked at crocheted doilies, artificial flowers, the paraffin heater, colourful wallpaper and carpet, religious iconography such as The Last Supper, the drinks cabinet, the ‘Blue Spot’ Radiogram and the Country & Western singer Jim Reeves. Visitors to the exhibition could then access these sound bite oral histories by dialling a number on Bakelite styled telephone with hand piece receiver. Interesting many young people were unfamiliar with this type of telephone and had fun consequently discovering how to use it.

The final and current use of oral history as a methodology is in the context of The Beauty Shop exhibition at the 198 Gallery (January-March 2008), where a typical High Street shop installation has been recreated with black hair and skin care products sponsored by various cosmetic retailers such as PAKS and Sleek. A second gallery space houses six listening posts (three male and three female), where visitors can hear sound bite interviews about the black experience of hair, skin complexion and the body while looking at their reflection in a full length mirror. There is also confessional booth where visitors can record their responses to and reflections on the exhibition.

The interviews that formed the basis for this audio material were individual and group based and anonymous, which gave the interviewees the confidence and safety to be more candid and open. As with all my use of oral history approaches, my own personal experience of the subject matter was shared with interviewees to gain their trust and stimulate the interviewee in terms of what they revealed. My own personal experience of hair, skin complexion and the body from childhood, teenage years and adulthood also forms part of the audio selection. © Michael McMillan – February 2008

Biography

Michael McMillan is a British born writer, playwright, curator and academic of Vincentian parentage. Recent plays include: Master Juba (Theatre is/GLYPT – South East tour 2006) www.theatreis.org , Babel Junction (co-written with 4 other writers – Maya Productions – Bullion Room, Hackney Empire 2006) www.mayaproductions.co.uk , Blood for Britain (BBC Radio 4 Drama 2002), Brother to Brother (Talawa Theatre 1998 & national tour 1996) and Invisible (Double Edge Theatre 1993 & The King’s Head Theatre 1998). Recent performance/installation pieces include: Portrait of a Shopping Centre as a Cathedral (Art & Society -Dalston Cross Shopping Centre 1990).

He curated The West Indian Front Room: Memories & Impressions of Black British Homes installation/exhibition (Geffrye Museum 2005-06), which had over 35,000 visitors and was the inspiration for Van Huis Uit: The Living Room of Migrants in The Netherlands (Imagine IC, Bijlmer, Amsterdam January-May 2007) www.imagineic.nl , which was retitled as That’s the way we do it! (OBT Central Library, Tilburg May-August 2007) His exhibition was also the basis of Tales from the Front Room, a documentary on which he was consultant (BBC4 March 2007). In developing The Front Room project he has collaborated with inIVA (The Institute of International Visual Arts) to produce a new interactive website – www.thefrontroom.org. His new exhibition, The Beauty Shop opened at the 198 Gallery, London (January –March 2008) www.198.org.uk.

He has edited several books including: The Black Boy Pub & Other Stories: The Black Experience in High Wycombe (1997) and Growing Up is Hard to Do: A Book for Young People & Adults about Sexual Health (Young People’s Health Project 2002) Same Difference: 25 Years of International Volunteering with The Daneford Trust (The Daneford Trust 2006). His essays have been published in several international publications and journals. He is Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at the London College of Communication, University of Arts and a Research Student Tutor completing a PhD at Middlesex University.

Michael McMillan – November 2007