18 March, 2026
Reading Against the Grain: Katherine Green on the Untold Sounds of East London
I sat with artist, curator, and historian Katherine Green, Mega Mega’s curator, to chat about music heritage. I was thrilled because I have witnessed British sounds constantly being remixed and reimagined with all the different communities that call the UK home. Me being Ndebele and witnessing the rise in popularity of South African house music in Britain is warming. This was a sound that danced in our annual family braais, blasted in my uncle’s blue Peugeot 306 GTI, background noise to when my mum was doing chores around the house — now celebrated across multiple channels, festivals, and platforms in my heritage home. That warmth is what we want to capture with Mega Mega; Romford’s contributions to dance and electronic music, shaped by diaspora communities and working-class heritage.
Katherine Green knows that feeling well. As co-lead of Rendezvous Projects, an artist-run Community Interest Company based in East London, her work is built around a simple but urgent mission: to establish narratives that have been forgotten, underrepresented, or ignored. Katherine leads on music heritage within the organisation and her starting point, like many historians and artists, is personal.
“I was aware of East London’s histories of clubs and raves, but you never really heard those stories in the media. Yes, there were representations of the music histories in central and West London, but I didn’t hear much about the area I grew up in.”– Katherine Green
Growing up in Walthamstow, Katherine had friends who were DJs, producers, and nightclub promoters: all of it pre-internet, none of it documented. “I think this missing puzzle in our cultural memory is due to the area being of working-class heritage.” The people creating culture were working behind the scenes and were not being archived to be remembered.
That absence became a calling.
Katherine’s first major music heritage project took her into census records from the 1960s, and one finding has stayed with her ever since. Around 650 people in Waltham Forest identified as coming from a Black Caribbean background, a small community whose cultural footprint would prove enormous. “Just how seismic that tiny community has been on culture in the borough just blew me away.” The connections ran deep. Families knew each other, worked together, created together. For example, DJ Linden’s mum worked as a nurse alongside producer Lennie De Ice’s mum. From those networks came a sound that Katherine describes as having “gone on to change our culture in this country and what we export as music and consider to be British.”
What followed in the late 80s and early 90s was an explosion. Home computing made music production accessible for the first time. Bass culture and the influence of Jamaican sound systems shaped how people thought about space and bass. Blues parties fed into the rave scene. And because Black communities were often unwelcome in traditional club venues, they found and created their own spaces and in doing so, created something new. Hardcore. Jungle. Drum and Bass. Genres that are now considered cornerstones of British music, born from necessity and diaspora and ingenuity.
“And thank goodness that I’ve grown up with all these incredible different cultural influences,” Katherine says. “It just means that my life is so much richer. I just want to honour that and celebrate that and thank people for doing that work.”
Which brings us to Romford and to Danny Donnelly. For years, Katherine had been hearing the same thing from people across the music scene: you need to speak to Danny Donnelly. “His impact is so big and important, and I don’t think the full story is told — and the connection to Romford in particular.” When the opportunity to work on Mega Mega came up, it felt, Katherine says, like “worlds colliding.”
Katherine came to Romford with surface knowledge and some preconceptions, drawn precisely by the questions she couldn’t yet answer. “What about Romford was a catalyst for so many clubs, nightlife, and music production?” It’s a question the project is determined to answer and to answer publicly with the people whose lives were and are shaped by it.
At a moment of deep political division, Katherine sees Mega Mega as more than cultural archiving. “This is an opportunity to gently remind people of why we shouldn’t be divided and what unity can bring.” Music in Britain has reflected that. This project is making sure Romford gets its credit for reflecting it too.
Katherine’s listening recommendation:
Rachel Wallace — Tell Me Why (1992)
