Babylonian nights: emotion, identity, and the Caribbean party in England, 1950–1987

This article examines parties held by the Caribbean diaspora in England between 1950 and 1987, focusing on their emotional dynamics and relationship to diasporic identity. It analyses two major domestic party formats, house parties and ‘blues parties’, arguing that these spaces were physically, demographically, and temporally distinct. In each, identity, feeling, and experience were mobilised to serve community needs shaped by specific historical moments. The article shows how changing ideas of diasporic identity, alongside shifts in musical expression, both reflected and shaped the affective atmospheres of these gatherings. It also explores how material culture and practices of consumption helped produce particular sensory and emotional effects, especially in blues parties, where they created an ‘emotional economics of nostalgia’. Despite their differences, both house parties and blues parties functioned as ‘emotional refuges’ from the cultural, emotional, and structural pressures of racism in British society. In making this argument, the article calls for greater attention to the historically plastic emotion concepts that constituted racism, and for a reconsideration of discrimination and racist violence as emotional expressions grounded in those concepts.