“I was on the Tube. It was 1988. I was miles away from my country, heading at a terrific speed toward London’s West End. The train crackled and bumped. The night fell. The lights of a strange city rushed by. I was alone and looking at a clutch of young black men on the other side of the swaying car. They were dressed in expensive leather jackets, torn jeans, and sharp black shoes. Each had hair that was sculpted by greasy chemicals into a fantastic, wavy jet-black shape. They looked like something out of the American past—the Detroit not of techno but of Motown. One had a ghetto blaster. Its speakers filled the car with a tune by the Pasadenas, “Tribute (Right On).” The men on the train looked like the men singing the funky, brassy tune coming from the ghetto blaster. Later, I determined that the Pasadenas were the first popular expression of a British underground music that was leading to acid jazz, to the neo-soul moment, to black Britain’s fidelity, to the funk sounds and stage magic of post-jazz black America.”