It was just hours until the first missiles would land. The last day of an era in Europe. On the evening of 23 February, the world braced.

Widely considered to be the first Black British musical, Babymother follows Anita (Anjela Lauren Smith), who has an ambition to become a local Dancehall star. Courtney Yusuf meets Julian Henriques and Parminder Vir, director and producer, to retrace the film’s steps, over 20 years after its release.

Our neighbourhoods are the centre of our universes and how they are perceived by us and others has tangible, life-changing consequences. Aicha el-Beloui is a Casablanca-based illustrator, graphic designer, and creative director who builds maps that put residents’ lived experiences at their heart. They confront toxic clouds of prejudice head-on, and play with a map’s innate abstraction through the use of the surreal. Ahead of the unveiling of her new work, MO(VE)MENTS, a map and travelling art installation that explores the multitude of stories behind the Moroccan presence in the UK, Skin Deep’s Courtney Yusuf caught up with Aicha to chat about the emotional power of our neighbourhoods, the political danger of phone addiction, and the enduring myth of Casablanca.

In the shadow of Vesuvius and under the blazing Mediterranean sun sits a labyrinth of cobbles, zipping scooters, shouting neighbours and stone buildings plastered with posters. Amid the streets of one of Europe’s most densely populated cities is one of its most vibrant reggae scenes, with 10 sound systems throwing bass-filled parties each week. “There is no hostility in the scene,” explains Brian D’Aquino of Bababoom Hi Fi Sound System. “We have all known each other for years, live with each other, let each other borrow amplifiers or whatever. Plus there’s no money, which probably helps.”

Maysa Daw – a Palestinian singer, songwriter, rapper, and musician from Haifa – is a member of DAM, the first Palestinian hip-hop group. Skin Deep’s Courtney Yusuf caught up with Maysa on the group’s UK tour and ahead of the release of their new album, ‘Ben Haana wa Maana’.

Hip-hop in Palestine

Al-Andalus is alive again when Attab Haddad starts to play. An oud-player and composer with a passion for Flamenco, Iraqi-British Attab shared Turkish coffees with Skin Deep’s Courtney Yusuf to chat career priorities post 9-11, the value of musical fusion, and London’s siren call.

Reggae came to England in a suitcase, carried off a plane by George 'Peckings' Price.

In defiance of the haters, Yinka Esi Graves is a black-British Flamenco dancer living and working in Seville. After ten years in Spain training, Yinka’s work pushes against the boundaries of flamenco. She reflects on both her black identity and the tradition’s African roots, chatting to Skin Deep’s Courtney Yusuf about what connecting with truths, mental maths, and the black body as a vessel of knowledge.

Skin Deep’s Courtney Yusuf caught up with British-Iranian multi-disciplinary artist Lilian Nejatpour ahead of her performance at Somerset House on the 25th September. Her latest piece, ‘Choreophobia,’ explores the pressures of the western gaze in defining dance and gender in the Middle East and the highly politicised sensuality of the male body.

Rahill Jamalifard is the Iranian-American lead singer of Habibi – a four-strong, Brooklyn-based band that blends garage rock, Middle Eastern melodies, and girl-group harmonies. Currently on a world tour, Rahill chats earthquakes, Shirazi poetry, and the internet with Courtney Yusuf from Skin Deep.

I love to see Akala talking about The Odyssey. To have someone so thoughtful sharing their take on such an influential text, who has done so much to bring literature to young people of colour (through the Hip-Hop Shakespeare Company) and re-frame rap as a contemporary form of lyrical poetry, makes a pleasant change from the usual slim pickings of Sunday night telly.

Marwa al-Sabouni is a Syrian architect and the author of The Battle for Home (2016). In the book, Marwa charts how recent architectural and urban planning practices contributed to the collapse of the social fabric in Syria. In the face of massive reconstruction efforts that have already begun, Marwa also promotes a craft-based approach to construction that embraces the wisdom of earlier practices and designs, and the social interactions that they fostered.

With the gates of Gaza purportedly set to open after ten years of brutal isolation, Palestinian politics is entering unchartered waters. Following the rise to power of the Islamist-nationalist party Hamas, a decade has now passed since the coastal territory broke away from the the internationally-recognised, quasi-governmental Palestinian Authority (PA). For Gaza, those ten years outside of the Authority have been far from easy, with closed borders and three devastating wars with Israel putting

In the last 3 weeks, escalating violence in Myanmar (Burma) has forced around 380,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee into neighbouring Bangladesh. With a UN official declaring on Monday that this is a ‘textbook example of ethnic cleansing’, who are the Rohingya, what’s behind this mass exodus, and what lies ahead?

Can a city be understood by sight alone? On October 18th, the Royal Institute of British Architect’s ‘Echoes of Accra: Recordings from a West African Metropolis’ attempted to answer this question.

Many a Lagos summer has begun with the crack and shatter of a thunderstorm. But one heavy downpour in June of this year left a particularly destructive trail in its wake. The storm left behind the ruins of Whanyinna Primary, an innovative floating school that had brought the world’s attention to the Makoko settlement of Lagos lagoon. This collapse is unfortunately just the latest indignity suffered by the riverine community over the last decade.

Following the Sound System Outernational Conference at Goldsmith’s University of London in January 2016, Skin Deep got in touch with Michael McMillan, Thali Lotus, and Paul Huxtable to talk about their involvement in sound system culture.