Kent Roach: Music, Identity & the Beauty of In-Between Spaces

In this deeply moving episode, Lungani Sibanda and Donald McLean sit down with long-time friend and cultural elder Kent Roach a Liverpool-born musician, activist, and educator with roots that stretch from Jamaica to Merseyside.

Kent reflects on being the child of a Jamaican father who arrived in the UK during the war effort in 1941 and a white Liverpudlian mother whose quiet strength shaped his world. We talk music, his band Montuno’s Afro-Cuban jazz-funk fusion as well as memory, identity, the forgotten labour of white mothers in Black families, and the beauty (and burden) of living in the margins.

We also dive into “liminal space” that complex in-between where Kent has built a life full of rhythm, justice, and deep community connection.

It’s a conversation about belonging, plurality, and legacy with plenty of laughter, storytelling, and, as always, a good nata.

🎧 Tune in, reflect, and meet the man behind the saxophone.