Cockney Rebels exhibition review: The musical legacy of Tower Hamlets
The exhibition Cockney Rebels by the Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives spans centuries to tell a story of popular music in our borough
In the early 60s, you could rent out music at the Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives – with some exceptions. A sign from the time, now displayed in the library’s main entrance, somewhat snootily lists the genres available, including ‘classical’ ‘children’s’ and ‘hymns’ but missing out on punk, rock and pop music.
The library purchased its first punk album a few years later, but in 2024 it truly changed its tune, with the exhibit ‘Cockney Rebels,’ a showcase of popular music spanning the past four hundred years of music in Tower Hamlets. Cockney Rebels is free and open for the public to visit until February 2025.
The exhibition is titled after Steve Harley’s rock band ‘Cockney Rebel.’ Harley, who wrote for the East London Advertiser in the ’70s, told Journalist Richard Bryson in an interview that he grew his hair long to get sacked from the paper and follow his rock music dreams.
On a deeper level, historian and lead curator for the exhibit Robert Jones said the name felt right for what the exhibition was trying to do. ‘A Cockney is anyone who calls the East End their home,’ he explained, ‘and a career making music is always a rebellious choice.’
Filling the main entrance hall of the library are thoughtfully labelled portraits, record covers and musical ephemera following the trail of musicians from Tower Hamlets. They’ve shaped music locally and globally, from big names like Dizzee Rascal to relative unknowns like the Stepney Sisters.
A QR code at the beginning of the exhibit allows you to ‘listen along’ to the exhibit, starting with a soothing acapella rendition of ‘The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green folk ballad,’ arguably the East End’s earliest produced popular song hailing back at least to 1624.
Next in Stepney, you hear sea shanties such as ‘Ratcliffe Highway’ and ‘Tower of London,’ born from groups singing at busy docks in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
At the same time, popular music spread through ‘penny gaffs,’ through the 19th century, rowdy and cheap venues with bawdy acts and popular songs performed to a single piano.
Penny gaffs led to musical halls like the Paragon Theatre opening up, with more elaborate sets and story-telling combined with music. Acts including ‘Burlington Bertie from Bow,’ recorded with grain and plenty of horns by early drag king Ella Shields (a mentor of Julie Andrews) are featured in the exhibition.
These music halls were the roots of the genre of ‘musical theatre’. While the West End honed the art, the penny gaffs and music halls of the East End are where it was born. Following World War I and the invention of cinema, the music halls largely closed.
‘Cockney Rebels’ tracks immigration through changing sounds, starting with the influence of Russian-Jewish refugees in the East End. By the 1930s, migrants were re-interpreting the English zeitgeist with songs like ‘A Kosher Foxtrots Medley.’
Combined with the jazz influence of artists visiting the UK from America, the East End also birthed ‘Yiddisher’ jazz. Notably, Max Bacon’s (oddly catchy) ‘Beigels’, a parody of Harry Champion’s popular (at the time) ‘Boiled Beef and Carrots.’
Helen Shapiro as well as the Beverley Sisters both hailed from Bethnal Green and were superstars of the 50s and early 60s. Shapiro even toured with the Beatles as her supporting act, and the Beverley Sisters are known for hits like ‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.’ Yet their stars were somewhat eclipsed by the rock, punk and grime to come from Tower Hamlets later on.
The ‘Windrush’ generation of migrants from UK Commonwealth countries between the late 40s and early 70s, also brought new sounds to the East End, including the first Black British Jazz player Maxine Daniels, whose father was a Caribbean seaman and an English mother of mixed race from Canning Town.
The first rock song produced in the UK was ‘Teach You to Rock,’ recorded by Jewish East Ender Tony Crombie in 1957. There was also Kenny Lynch, popular in the 60s, from Stepney and one of the UK’s few famous black British pop stars.
Although the UK’s most famous punk and rock artists were largely white, the East End was host to many notable exceptions, including the first Punjabi Punk, Suresh Singh (aka the Cockney Sikh).
There was also punk band X-Ray Spex’s lead singer, ‘Poly-Styrene’ whose father was a Somali dock worker in the East End, as well as trailblazing British-Bangladeshi rock band ‘Joi Bangla Banned.’
Psychedelic rock band ‘The Small Faces,’ began to popularise singing in their native East End accent, laying the grounds for the Britpop movement. Also hailing from Tower Hamlets was the Bethnal Green-raised founder of Fleetwood Mac, Peter Green, and former Spitalfields rag trader and musical royal Billy Ocean.
Less-known but equally interesting artists include Steve Harley, the founder of the exhibition’s rock band namesake, Cockney Rebel. Also featured are the Stepney Sisters, a pioneering feminist and queer rock group.
From the early 2000s, Tower Hamlets’ most famous (and arguably most important) contribution to music was born – Grime. Bow, E3 birthed titans of the genre like Skepta, Riley and Dizzee Rascal. ‘Cockney Rebels’ fittingly ends here, although the library will continue archiving our borough’s musical history as it continues to be made.
‘Cockney Rebels’ is open and free to the public until February 2025, with a pamphlet accompanying the exhibition to be announced soon.
Upcoming events include ‘As I was a-walking down Ratcliff Highway – an East End street in traditional folk song’ on Thursday 17 October, 6:30-8:30 pm and ‘The Life & Times of the Music Hall and Marie Lloyd’ on Saturday 7 December, 2.00 pm-3.30 pm.
Event bookings are available at the Tower Hamlets Local History Library and archives.
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