Twelve special stones have been scattered in and around the High Street, all celebrating music giants with a connection to the area. Bob Marley doesn't get a mention because he merely spent a year living in Neasden, two miles distant.
The project was created by community group Harlesden Bassline in partnership with Brent Council and used £70,000 of funding from the government’s UK Shared Prosperity Fund. The stones were embedded in the pavement a few months ago, but only on 1st July did the great and good gather to celebrate the fact you can now walk all over them.
It's not just singers and bands, the commemorative discs also pay homage to record producers and record shops based in the local area. The very first stone in the trail commemorates Sonny Roberts and can be found outside his former record shop near Willesden Junction station.... now occupied by a Brazilian butcher.
Orbitone Records opened in 1970 and was the UK's first black-owned record shop to cater for Caribbean and African music. As well as selling to the local immigrant community its fame spread more widely, with DJ's John Peel and Gary Crowley often dropping by to browse. In 1984 Sonny even produced a chart hit, that being Hot Hot Hot by Arrow, from a recording studio in Kilburn since replaced by a block of flats. The business did so well that Sonny moved to larger premises at 78 Craven Park Road before retiring to Jamaica with his wife in 1997. You get absolutely none of this backstory from the plaque, alas, only the fact that Sonny Roberts was a TRAILBLAZER.
The trail's opening celebration was held at the old Picture Palace, a Harlesden cinema opened in 1910 and closed not long afterwards. Brent council bought the building a few years ago and have transformed it into a community centre called the CAVA Centre of Excellence, a none too catchy name which stands for Community Asset Voice Alliance. As far as I can tell the site has no connection to any of the trailblazers but there are still three commemorative plaques in the pavement outside - General Levy, Janet Kay and Ruff Cutt UK.
General Levy worked with Sonny Roberts at Orbitone but is best known for his groundbreaking work in ragga, jungle and dancehall, including the 1994 hit Incredible with M-Beat (wicked, wicked, junglist massive!). Janet Kay was born in Willesden and very nearly had a number 1 with Silly Games in 1979. Seeing her plaque instantly triggered the exalted tune in my head, a little too high for me to hum along, and also made me realise she's now an MBE (since 2023, it turns out). Ruff Cutt is an NW10-based label with a more recent reggae pedigree, and all three of these recipients turned up for their stone's unveiling back in February.
I've already shown you eight of the twelve discs so as you can see I did a very good job of finding them. The Harlesden Walk of Music doesn't make this easy however, the map being well-hidden, a bit off-target and generally of inadequate resolution. If you want people to follow a trail best not flash a blurry image on Instagram or post it once on Facebook. The best map I found was tucked away as image number five on the crowdfunder page, and even then it wasn't 100% obvious which street some of the plaques were actually on. For example I spent far too long checking the pavement outside a wholesaler's rear entrance on Crownhill Road when I should instead have been round the front. The front was rather special though, being the double entrance to Hawkeye Enterprises Ltd.
The main shop is a Jamaican bakery, so serving up soft-style patties and molasses-stuffed bulla as well as bread, buns, cakes and puddings. The real interest is down the side passage which leads to a separate shop behind the bakery, but owned by the same family, which is a reggae-focused 'records and CDs store'. Amazingly it's only a year off its 50th anniversary although sadly shop manager Gerry Anderson died in 2022. Hawkeye still acts a focus for the community, as does Starlight Records across the street, these the last two surviving record stores in Harlesden. Both have a pavement plaque and both of these are more easily recognised than 2018's World Reggae Day contribution, a sapling called the ReggaeTree.
Some of those commemorated already had a blue plaque in the area - not from English Heritage but erected by appreciative local parties. One of these is for TheCimarons, the UK's first roots reggae band, who met for the first time in a youth club on Tavistock Road in 1967. Much of their early career was spent as session musicians at Willesden-based label Trojan Records, invariably reggae-based, although their biggest chart success was as backing group for Snoopy vs The Red Baron in 1973. The old plaque is locationally accurate but easily overlooked up a sideroad, whereas the new pavement slab is on the high street outside Harlesden Methodist Church with far more footfall.
Another existing plaque was for singer Dennis Brown, described by Bob Marley as "The Crown Prince of Reggae", who chose to live in Harlesden when he moved from Jamaica in the 1970s. The Harlesden Walk of Music doesn't expect you to hike up to 55 Hazeldean Road to see it, nor to visit Brownlow Road where Delroy Washington lived, so placing both their stones outside Harlesden Library saves everyone a lengthy walk.
Incidentally the library is currently hosting an exhibition of Brent Reggae Album Covers, about a dozen in total, on boards scattered between the bookshelves. It showcases cover shots of reggae albums that have been photographed in Brent since the 1960s, for example the Wembley back garden on the front of Dubbing in the Back Yard released by King Tubby and the Aggravators in 1982. The exhibition's on for five months to celebrate British Black Music Month (which lasts two months), so best ignore the temporal challenge and focus on the pin-sharp drilldown into musical nostalgia.
The northernmost stone celebrates another local record label, Jet Star Records, and can be found outside a hair salon at 78 Craven Park Road. Again you learn nothing about Jet Star by spotting it, any background information being hidden away on a non-obvious Harlesden Walk of Music online resource. On their socialmedia presence they seem more interested in the impressive line-up of reggae stars and relatives who attended the launch event than in promoting the twelve stones themselves, or indeed telling you where to find them. But from what I saw those stones are already bringing moments of joy to central Harlesden as shoppers look down and remember, confirming reggae runs deep in NW10, and it's fabulous to see an area embracing and celebrating its cultural heritage in this way.
