Echoes

Echoes is a London-published monthly magazine devoted to Black music, covering soul, jazz, funk, reggae and hip hop. It began in 1976 as a weekly newspaper called Black Echoes, at a time when no other British weekly served Black music fans across those genres, was renamed Echoes in 1981, and became a monthly glossy magazine in January 2000. It has reported on Black music in Britain since the 1970s, and it describes itself as the United Kingdom's essential Black music monthly. Its history spans the rise of hip hop and contemporary rhythm and blues in the 1980s, the growth of British reggae and soul, and the continuing development of jazz in Britain.

Origins as Black Echoes

The first issue of Black Echoes was published on 30 January 1976. It was a weekly 24-page tabloid newspaper covering several genres of Black music, at the time mostly soul, funk, reggae, northern soul and some blues. It took in the rise of hip hop and rhythm and blues during the 1980s, and added jazz to its repertoire. The date matters: 1976 was a year in which reggae was reaching a wide British audience, soul and funk dominated Black British dancefloors, and the generation of Black Britons born after the arrival of the Empire Windrush was coming of age. A weekly paper devoted to their music was a significant addition to British publishing.

The paper's publishers were John Thompson, former boss of IPC, where he was publisher of Melody Maker, Sounds and Disc and Music Echo, and Alan Walsh, co-founder of Sounds and a former jazz journalist with Melody Maker. The paper's first editor was Peter Harvey, with Alan Walsh as editor-in-chief. That pedigree, drawn from the established weekly music press, helps explain the paper's professional standing: it was founded by people who knew how weekly music papers worked, and it applied that craft to music the general papers covered only partially.

Position in the 1970s and 1980s Music Press

Black Echoes was the only weekly read for Black music fans across the genres. That claim defines its historical importance. In the late 1970s a reader interested in soul, reggae, funk and northern soul together had no equivalent British weekly; the general music papers covered rock first, and Black music coverage was fragmented across specialist columns and the Black community press. A surviving early issue from 14 February 1976, preserved and shared by reggae historians, shows the paper covering Dennis Brown and Cornell Campbell within weeks of its launch, and collectors who have made those early reggae articles available note that the magazine was one of the first to cover reggae artists in the early to mid 1970s, and that it featured many different artists besides Bob Marley and Peter Tosh.

During the 1980s the paper followed its music as it changed. Hip hop arrived from New York and found a British audience; contemporary rhythm and blues reshaped soul; British reggae produced its own stars and sound systems; and jazz, which Walsh had written about earlier in his career, became part of the paper's repertoire. Renamed Echoes in 1981, the title broadened its name while keeping its subject: Black music in its contemporary forms, reported weekly.

From Weekly Newspaper to Monthly Magazine

With colour playing an ever more important part in the printing of newspapers and magazines, Echoes metamorphosed into a four-colour glossy magazine in January 2000, becoming monthly at that point. The change of format changed the kind of journalism the title could do. A weekly tabloid lives on news, charts and speed; a monthly glossy lives on interviews, photography, reviews and considered features. Echoes after 2000 could present its artists with the production values of a magazine while retaining the specialist knowledge accumulated since 1976.

The monthly magazine continued to cover soul, jazz, rhythm and blues, hip hop and reggae. A July 2014 cover represents the mature title, and reviews in the magazine were being quoted by record labels in 2012 describing Echoes as the United Kingdom's essential Black music monthly, a positioning the magazine used for itself. The longevity is itself notable: a title founded as a weekly in 1976 that was still publishing as a monthly in the 2010s had outlived most of the British weekly music press that surrounded its birth.

Writers and Contributors

Echoes has been a home for specialist writers on Black music. Kevin Le Gendre, a writer on jazz and Black music in general for almost three decades, has served as the magazine's deputy editor, writing about Black music in detail and arguing for the brilliance of the music and the need to understand its social context. John Masouri, a journalist, author and historian of Jamaican music, began writing for Echoes in 1988, when it was a United Kingdom weekly Black music newspaper formerly known as Black Echoes, and built a career as one of the foremost reggae journalists from that base. Chris Wells has written soul coverage for the magazine, including summer soul round-ups in the 2010s.

Such writers give a specialist magazine its authority. Reggae, soul and jazz each have deep histories, complex discographies and audiences who detect errors quickly; covering them well for decades requires journalists who live inside the music. The presence of long-serving contributors also provides continuity: a magazine that has reviewed an artist's early records can interview that artist decades later with an institutional memory few competitors can match.

Coverage in Depth

The magazine's genres interlock. Soul and funk provide its foundation, from American classics to British acts; reggae connects it to Jamaica and to Britain's Caribbean communities, from roots and dub to dancehall and lovers rock; jazz coverage ranges from historic figures to contemporary British players; hip hop and rhythm and blues bring in the dominant Black popular forms of the past four decades. Reviews are a core function: new albums by jazz, soul and reggae artists are assessed for readers who use the magazine as a buying and listening guide, and labels quote those reviews in their own promotion, as a British jazz label did in 2012 for an album the magazine praised.

Features place the music in its context. Writers for Echoes have addressed the contribution Black musicians have made across centuries and the discrimination many faced, treating Black music as both an art form deserving close technical analysis and a part of social history. That dual approach, musical and historical, has characterised serious Black music writing in Britain, and Echoes provided one of its longest-running platforms.

Echoes and Black British Media

Histories of Black British media place Black Echoes at the start of a modern timeline: a 1976 weekly focused on reggae, soul and funk, preceding the Voice newspaper founded in 1982 and the later lifestyle and film titles of the 1990s. In that company Echoes is unusual for its single-minded focus on music and for its longevity in print. Where many Black British titles addressed news and community affairs, Echoes addressed culture, and in doing so documented the soundtrack of Black Britain week by week and then month by month.

That documentation has archival value. Early issues preserve coverage of reggae in Britain in the 1970s that exists nowhere else, which is why enthusiasts have preserved and shared copies of the February 1976 issue's reggae articles for the first time online decades later. A weekly paper's news pages, gig listings and reviews capture a scene as it happened, including artists who never became famous enough for later histories.

Format and Frequency

Echoes is a monthly magazine, published in the United Kingdom in English. It began as a weekly 24-page tabloid newspaper in 1976, was renamed from Black Echoes in 1981, and took its present four-colour glossy monthly magazine form in January 2000. Its category is music, and its genres are soul, jazz, rhythm and blues, hip hop and reggae, with funk, northern soul and blues in its founding mix.

Readership

The readership comprises fans and professionals of Black music in Britain and beyond: soul and reggae collectors, jazz listeners, DJs, musicians and readers who want informed writing on music that the general press treats briefly. For such readers a specialist monthly offers depth, a reviews guide they trust, and the assurance that their music is the main subject rather than a sidebar.

Legacy

Echoes' legacy rests on three things: its founding role as the only weekly read for Black music fans across the genres in Britain; its adaptation, surviving the end of the weekly music press era by reinventing itself as a monthly glossy in 2000; and its writers, who carried specialist knowledge of reggae, soul and jazz across the decades. Few British music titles of any kind can trace an unbroken identity from a 1976 tabloid to a modern monthly.

Profile Summary

Echoes is a London-published monthly magazine of soul, jazz, rhythm and blues, hip hop and reggae. Founded on 30 January 1976 as the weekly tabloid Black Echoes by publishers John Thompson and Alan Walsh, with Peter Harvey as first editor, it was renamed Echoes in 1981 and became a four-colour glossy monthly in January 2000. Served by writers including deputy editor Kevin Le Gendre and reggae historian John Masouri, it remains a landmark of Black British music publishing.