Image description: Black Power Desk production shot. Photo by Helen Murray

London multi-hyphenate Urielle Klein-Mekongo returns with swagger: the writer-performer behind Yvette now turns historian-DJ, spinning a fearless new Black British musical that thumps with lovers rock, rap, soul and R&B. Set amid 1970s London’s community organising and the covert “Black Power Desk,” the show channels stories orbiting the Mangrove Nine while centring Black women’s leadership – history too rarely taught in classrooms or staged with this much groove.

Developed from Old Vic 12 and crafted with Renell Shaw and Gerel Falconer, Urielle’s score invites the audience right into ‘The Drum’ – part party, part protest, all heart. Think archive-to-anthem alchemy: courtroom transcripts flipped into bars, heavy basslines inspired by era touchstones, and a live band binding us into family. As 2025 asks what solidarity sounds like, Black Power Desk answers with hope, humour and a call to breathe – and not ask permission.

Why this story now? What gap in Black British history on our stages were you determined to fill with Black Power Desk?

I watched Guerilla (a TV drama series) in 2017, a show about a pair of activists in 1970s London that set out to free a political prisoner and wage a resistance movement. This is when I began to read into the Mangrove Nine, a group of British Black activists in the 1970s, tried for inciting a riot when they were protesting against the police for the targeting of The Mangrove, a Caribbean restaurant in Notting Hill, West London. I discovered a world of Black British history that centred Black women, a world that is not taught in our classrooms or highlighted on stage or screen. I set out to tell this story in a musical format that would relate to the young generation of today, in a similar fashion to Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda, but crucially I wanted it to be in a UK voice.

Image description: Black Power Desk production shot. Photo by Helen Murray

Favourite artist and track from 1970, and how (if at all) did it sneak into the show’s musical DNA?

Whilst making the music for this show my favourite influence was Black Uhuru’s ‘Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner’. That song is so culturally specific to the Black presence, and reggae and the essence of that time. It’s the song I used as inspiration to get that heavy base sound we’ve got flowing through those different songs in our show. ‘Pappa Was a Rolling Stone’ by The Temptations is the song which inspired one of my biggest duets in the show between the two central characters Celia and Dina who are the two sisters that carry the story.

Music Video: ‘Papa Was A Rolling Stone’ by the Temptations, 1972.

Talk us through the collaboration: how did you, Renell Shaw and Gerel Falconer blend lover’s rock, rap, soul and R&B with the sisters’ emotional arcs?

For me Black Power Desk would be UK history told in a distinctly UK voice. And for that to happen I knew I had to bring onboard my long-time collaborator Gerel Falconer (also member of Highrise) to be my co-lyricist and rapperturg – this is a role he has pioneered within the industry, working to take story and dialogue and convert them into bars. He’s a genius – I don’t know many people in the industry who could take reams of dry archive information on historical court cases, and deliver a dynamic, urgent – and funny – rap.

Building on the work of early collaborator Richard Melkonian, we brought on board another great musical talent. Renell Shaw won the Ivor Novello Award in 2020 – a prestigious award for songwriting and composing. We chatted about our favourite influences from the era and the flavours we wanted to bring in from today – Calypso, ska, soca, grime, UK Rap dancehall – to help us create a musical world that blended 1970s with contemporary sounds. From the very beginning we had a live band onstage partly because live music was such a strong component of the sound system era, but also because of the togetherness that comes from having live music.

We’re bringing the audience into The Drum, where our show is set – they’re part of the family, the party, the struggle, the fight and the hope.

Image description: Black Power Desk production shot. Photo by Helen Murray.

From Celia and Dina: which character traits challenged you most to write truthfully?

Black Power Desk is a story about two sisters, one who’s political and one who’s non-political. This is all happening in the backdrop of a 1970s UK Black resistance and it’s about them figuring out where they stand in this resistance whilst also trying to protect and defend their community. I put two extreme versions of myself on stage, the part of me that wants to fight all the time and stand against all sorts of racism and prejudice that’s existing in the world but there’s also a part of me that just wants to exist in the world, let me live in my humanity and just be at peace. They are extensions of myself, and both traits were just as challenging to write because they equally have a place and an important role.

Black Power Desk

Brixton House
3 September – 3 October
brixtonhouse.co.uk

Warwick Arts Centre
14 October
warwickartscentre.co.uk

Lowry
16 -18 October
thelowry.com

Birmingham Hippodrome
22 – 25 October
birminghamhippodrome.com