The History Lesson

Abstract

Within this chapter, we follow the ways in which the past enters into our experience and what that experience is like through an account of a very different northern soul experience—the premiere of the Northern Soul film in Blackburn—and three “history lessons” provided by older members of the scene. Building on these different engagements with the history of the scene, we examine how the past in different formats—through personal recollections, films, documentaries, and books—enters into the experience of young men and women, and what indeed this past is like. As a central thread to contemporary scene experience and a central element in individual claims to belong, it becomes clear that the northern soul past is tenuous and living, a history that is modified and debated, reshaped and remade.