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This article maps and analyses the relationship between football and black sound cultures in the UK. Employing a chronological and thematic approach, specifically, it examines the inclusion of football in post-Windrush calypsos, the appropriation of black music forms in football stadia, reggae as cultural critique of English football and British society, and the connections between transnational sounds and a diasporic footballing consciousness. Theoretically, this article draws on – and places in dialogue – Paul Gilroy's concept of the 'Black Atlantic', Josh Kun's notion of 'audiotopia' and Les Back's emphasis on 'deep listening'. This framing illuminates how music forms travel back and forth along diasporic roots and routes between Africa, the Caribbean, the United States and the United Kingdom. Critically, the article locates the relationship between football, music and race as providing the context and capacity for progressive change, and foregrounds its role as an important medium and method of cultural resistance to the marginalisations experienced by Black Atlantic diasporas and within football itself. The article concludes by looking forward, in an era of Black Lives Matter, to consider the spaces and practices of fandom and consumption that might open up as a result of listening and responding sociologically to the relationship between football and black sound cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2016, black former professional footballer, Howard Gayle, was awarded an MBE, in recognition of his work in anti-racist education. He rejected the accolade due to its colonial associations and the experiences of his African ancestors under the British Empire. This article analyses and theorizes the geographical, cultural, political, historical and temporal contexts and consequences surrounding this refusal. While highlighting the fluid and reciprocal spatial and temporal positionalities that guide Gayle's articulations, it argues that it is essentially through and in the local spaces and places of his home city of Liverpool – a pivotal location in the historic international slave trade – that his anti-imperial consciousness is forged and enacted. The article addresses the possibilities that emerge from demands for social and reparative justice by public figures such as Gayle, in terms of decolonial thinking, anti-racist pedagogy and their status as a source rather than an object of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a case study of the Amsterdam World Cup (WK Amsterdam), an annual amateur football competition and multicultural festival. Placing the event within the context of Dutch integration policy, it examines the differing and contested conceptions of identity, community and multiculturalism articulated by participants and organisers and, more broadly, the role that 'alternative' events play in resisting or reinforcing dominant political ideologies. Based on observational fieldwork, the analysis primarily addresses three main issues. First, it considers the extent to which the tournament provides a public space for community mobilisation and, as is the case with mainstream sporting events, the articulation of ethnic, national and gender identities. Second, it discusses associations between whiteness and national identity, and the role of alternative sporting events in facilitating the articulation of oppositional post-colonial identities. Third, it evaluates the tournament's capacity to promote multiculturalism, cultural interaction and integration into a municipal Amsterdam identity. The article demonstrates that, whilst the tournament has the potential to play a significant role in challenging racism and destabilising white privilege in dominant local football cultures, aspects of the event - analogous to many other supposedly 'alternative' sport events - actually reproduce the inequalities and exclusionary practices of mainstream sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The overall scope of this article is to examine how young British Asians experience and articulate recent transformations in popular notions of 'race', nation and culture The context for the analysis is sport, which acts as a prominent arena in which these variables are contested and, indeed, embodies the complexities of national affiliations and identities. The article argues that despite continuing ethnically exclusive manifestations of 'Englishness' - both in football and in the wider society - increasing numbers of young British Asians are expressing their support for the England football team. This is in direct contrast to cricket, where large numbers choose to follow a team from the Indian subcontinent. The article argues that these trends reflect the multifaceted, fragmented nature of diasporic identities, in that the diverse sporting affiliations of young British Asians enable them to emphasize both their cultural traditions and the permanency of South Asian settlement in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]