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Go on a magical musical tour through the history of records at this beautifully designed and satisfyingly informative exhibition on the top floor of Camden’s Jewish Museum. You’ll be greeted by a row of antique gramophones and the story of how music came to be widely played on vinyl, told with a focus on contributions from Jewish inventors and businessmen.
The second half of the display will draw you in with visuals rather than sounds; it’s essentially four walls of record sleeves, punctuated by information panels that reveal why some of the Jewish faces pictured have ‘blacked up’, which religious records made their production companies rich, how the punk movement was born and why Barbra Streisand is the modern Sophie Tucker. And make sure you leave time to listen to them all – the retro jukebox will allow you to play any of the 100-odd singles on display, or you can grab some headphones and listen to the tracks on ‘JewTube’ on the iPads provided, then learn more about the artists in the specially designed audio commentary. This exhibition could be the personification of a particularly interesting BBC4 music documentary, and it’ll delight anybody who’s ever spun a record.