Kanya King, who founded Mobo Awards to champion black music, dies at 57

A significant story is unfolding on the international scene. Kanya King, who founded Mobo Awards to champion black music, dies at 5736 minutes ago Share Save Add as preferred on GoogleAlex TaylorBBC News Culture reporterGetty ImagesMobo Awards founder Kanya King, who worked tirelessly to champion black musicians' contribution to British culture, has died at the age of 57. She was best known as the tenacious founder of the Music of Black Origin awards, which celebrated their 30th anniversary earlier this year in Manchester. Speaking at the ceremony, she told the she had funded the first event out of her own pocket, "against my mother's judgment...

King died on Wednesday after "a courageous and characteristically determined battle with colon cancer", the Mobo Organisation said in a statement. "She was surrounded by her family, close friends and love. "PA MediaKing celebrated with Olivia Dean after the singer won three Mobos at this year's ceremony in MarchLaunched in 1996, the Mobos became globally renowned for their recognition of black talent - platforming upcoming stars and pushing to break industry boundaries.

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King defied expectations as a teenage mother who dropped out of school to gatecrash the predominantly white male music industry. She studied English literature at London's Goldsmiths College and later, while working as a TV researcher, spotted a gap in the market for a black-focused awards show. But success did not come easily.

"I remember being told, 'You've got a chip on your shoulder, why are you talking about race all the time? '" she told Music Week in 2021. By 1999, King had been awarded an MBE for services to music as the Mobos grew from scrappy underdog to music industry fixture, holding its own against the long-established Brit Awards.

Its musical spectrum remains uniquely broad - giving early support to UK garage at the turn of the millennium, alongside R&B, soul, reggae, jazz, Afrobeat and broader African music, and championing grime before its mainstream explosion. Against all oddsKing's upbringing inspired her forthright passion for change and entrepreneurial spirit. Growing up as the youngest of nine children in a cramped council flat in Kilburn, north London, from the age of eight she juggled schoolwork and part-time jobs to earn pocket money.

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Born on February 12 1969 to an Irish mother and Ghanaian father, she was influenced by the discrimination her parents faced. "My father had a strong African accent, he struggled to get a job," King told Music Week. "You'd watch things at Christmas time, like Zulu, and the images of Africans were of savages – the very opposite .

My father was very elegant. "His death from leukaemia when she was just 13 had a profound effect on King, who also saw her mother held back by their circumstances. "Seeing people not have the opportunity to achieve their dreams, that's what motivates and drives me, " she said, echoing an ethos that later became the foundation of the Mobos.

The story has become one of the most prominent items on the global agenda.