Latest news with #BBCYoungMusician
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘My son was cut out of BBC's Harry and Meghan wedding highlights because he is black'
A cellist who performed at the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's wedding was left out of the BBC's highlights package because he was black, his mother has claimed. Sheku Kanneh-Mason was chosen to perform at the 2018 ceremony, held at St George's Chapel, Windsor. His mother, Kadiatu, said she was dismayed to see that he was cut from the BBC highlights coverage, and was not featured in newspapers the next day. She suggested that the media did not know how to deal with a black cellist, as classical music was normally the preserve of white musicians. Speaking at the Hay Festival, in Wales, Mrs Kanneh-Mason said: 'When Sheku played at the royal wedding, that night he was not in any of the BBC highlights. So there was the choir, there was the preacher but he was left out as though he hadn't been there. 'The next morning, we looked through all the papers. He was not there. So they decided that he was going to be absent. And we thought, what's going on here? 'I think what it was: the gospel choir was doing what it was supposed to do. The preacher was doing what he was supposed to do. But a black cellist? A black cellist cancels itself out … he's not doing what he's supposed to be doing, he's not doing a black thing. That's really interesting, unpacking what the media thinks we're supposed to do.' Sheku, the first black winner of the BBC Young Musician competition, was chosen to perform at the wedding after the Duke saw him play at a charity event. He played three pieces of music at the ceremony. The wedding also featured gospel singers The Kingdom Choir, who performed Stand By Me, and American preacher Rt Rev Michael Curry, who was the first black presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church. His sermon, which centred on the redemptive power of love, was well-received and drew significant attention. The London-based choir, which features 30 singers and was formed in 1994, found fame after the wedding. They were regularly asked to perform and signed a record deal with Sony Music UK. Mrs Kanneh-Mason has written a book, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, about Sheku and his six musically gifted siblings, exploring 'issues of cultural, racial and national identity'. She said of Sheku entering the BBC Young Musician competition: 'I panicked because he had a massive afro at that point and I thought, 'If he goes on the stage with that… the judges are not going to believe he's a classical musician. Should we make him a bit more formal?' 'In the end, he went on as himself but we had to think about that: what the presentation was, what the image was. It's one of those things going on all the time.' Mrs Kanneh-Mason said that her daughter, Konya, a pianist, was racially abused by an audience member while a student at the Royal Academy of Music. She said a man came up to her daughter and said 'I think you played beautifully – I don't know, because I was looking at your body all the time. 'Then he said, 'You shouldn't be here, because you people are taking all the jobs from the white musicians who should be here'. And she looked around and thought, 'I am the only black musician, the only black person in this room, so whose job am I taking?'' Asked about her children suffering 'micro-aggressions', Mrs Kanneh-Mason said: 'They're called micro-aggressions but actually they're maxi-aggressions. They happen all the time. And having to navigate that on a daily basis is very difficult.' A BBC spokesman said: 'BBC News reported widely on Sheku Kanneh-Mason's role in the 2018 royal wedding including news that he was selected to play, multiple stories of how the day unfolded and on the impact of his performance.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
The Guardian
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Sheku Kanneh-Mason: ‘I had to place Black and classical next to each other in a way that made perfect sense'
When I won BBC Young Musician, I couldn't believe it. When I heard my name my whole body shone with delight. My hand covered my open mouth and, as I saw when I watched the footage back later, relief mixed with impossible joy on my face. I walked out in front of the standing crowd like a boy in a dreamworld … my family in a row, crying. I found out, much later, that social media, although mostly delighted, was also hosting a thread of darkened disbelief, turning on the idea that being Black meant I couldn't possibly have been good enough. Surely, they said, this was a 'politically correct' decision. He only won because he was Black. I was the first and therefore the unconscionable, impossible winner. If there were none before me, that itself was proof there should be none of us now. We were damned if we won and damned if we didn't. Luckily, my parents folded all of this into their quiet whispering together and hid it from me … I was very aware, though, of the kind of scrutiny I was weathering. The radio and newspaper interviews let me know without hiding it that I had questions to answer. On the one hand, was I a bona fide good cellist or'just' a Black musician? Was I really fit to be pushed into this spotlight and stand next to 'real' classical musicians who looked authentic? On the other hand, I was challenged, without having said a thing, for making my Black identity visible and meaningful when, surely, nothing mattered but the music? I remember thinking: 'Well, clearly it's on your mind because that's what you're asking me about.' This double-bind thrust upon me of denial and yet responsibility for my identity was a confusing but familiar message, and I knew my job was to remain quiet, firm and thoughtful. The only route was working harder … I wanted, first and foremost, to concentrate on playing the cello, on improving all the time and being the best musician I could be. But I carried a responsibility I couldn't shake. I wanted to represent hope and possibility for children, families and people who relied on the visible fact of who I was. Having a choice didn't come into it as there was none and never had been. I couldn't pretend to be anyone I wasn't but somehow, I had to place Black and classical next to each other in a way that made perfect, undeniable and glorious sense. In effect we have a two-tier education system in the UK, and its result is that we are educating our children differently from each other, along lines of disadvantage and plenty. Private schools offer prestigious music scholarships for skilled young musicians, and their music facilities are often state-of-the-art. For example, Eton College's website boasts of an astonishing offering of 'two concert halls, a recording studio, three music technology suites, drum suites, a music library and a large number of teaching and practice rooms'. It also advertises music scholarships: 'Each year, around 27 boys from a wide variety of backgrounds arrive at Eton as part of our Music Award programme, receiving specialist support to develop their musical talents.' Similarly, on its website, Winchester College does not shy away from music as a valid, worthy, career aspiration: 'Music Awards are available to any candidate who shows exceptional musical talent. Many former pupils have highly successful careers as performers, conductors and composers.' And at Marlborough College, the website acknowledges and encourages music as a significant career possibility: 'Where applicable, individual learning programmes are designed to meet the demands and needs of those wishing to study music at conservatoire or university following Marlborough.' To be educated in music within these schools, or education and opportunity outside, requires money, or class status or luck. It also requires desire, belief and an appreciation of the importance of music. And all this comes hand-in-hand with education and access. I appeared on the BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs in January 2024. When the host, Lauren Laverne, asked me whether I thought Rule, Britannia! should be dropped from the Last Night of the Proms repertoire, I said yes. There are a few things that are guaranteed to spark the volcano of racism that bubbles underground in the UK, and this is one of them. Many people outside the UK were frankly bemused by the rage I had quietly stoked, and could afford an amused and rather wry glance at it all, but from inside the atmosphere was toxic. I am a passionate supporter of the BBC Proms. Its series of concerts are a testament to the strength and creativity of live classical music, and I treasure the significance of this summer festival and its continuing legacy. A number of the concerts are televised but it's always been the case that the Last Night is reserved for the showcase, prime-time slot. It's a night where Britishness is proudly exhibited in all its joy, pomp and ceremony. We hear music from around the UK – from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland – sea shanties from Britain's island traditions, and compositions new and old. A lot of the repertoire is interchangeable and can be altered, dependent on the choice of musicians and programme planners, reflecting the passions or obsessions of the day. One section, however, has become somehow immovable, and an ice-hard determination to preserve its place has settled around it. It's a moment that most musicians and those who decide the repertoire would dearly love to leave behind as a rather embarrassing reminder of a Britishness that celebrates imperial glory and subjugation. It's a moment that acts to turn away many who themselves, and their relatives and ascendants, are on the wrong side of that history. The angry and somewhat baffling energy directed at retaining Rule, Britannia! seems to rest on the idea that here is Britishness, here is Englishness. Here are the root and proof of 'our' nationalist pride, and this is who 'we' are. It makes no odds – and seems utterly enraging to the defenders of this song – that there are many of us who don't fit into that 'we', or who feel profoundly and aggressively attacked by it. I had been honoured to perform at the Last Night the summer before. I loved playing and collaborating with the incredible Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen, and the Last Night is a wonderful culmination of the world-class, exciting, innovative, inclusive and exceptional concerts in the weeks that precede it. For Lise, as a Norwegian, there was nothing controversial about the lyrics of Rule, Britannia! or the charged sentiment within it, but for me, the situation was very different. I was not required to be on stage for its rowdy, raucous and heated rendition, the entire – almost entire – Royal Albert Hall of 5,000 people roaring the lines: 'Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves! Britons never, never, never will be slaves.' Using the words from a 1740 poem, Rule Britannia by James Thomson, and set to music by Thomas Arne in the same year, it is a composition tied to a particular kind of patriotism. Its vigour and intent were born in Britain's burgeoning slave trade and at the height of its thundering imperialism. I wasn't asked on the radio to give my historical analysis of the song, but to explain how I felt and could have felt being in the room while the song was belted out, unapologetically and rousingly, all around me. I had chosen to remain backstage for this moment because, I explained, it made me – and many others – feel uncomfortable. I said no more, but hoped my response was valid because honest. It was entirely true, and mattered, not just to me, but to whole groups of British people who felt we had a stake in a definition of Britishness. If our inclusion meant we should happily boast that we were not people who could be enslaved or subjugated by navy or army, we were radically not included. For my family, as descendants of slaves, or born in colonies, none of this was distant history. All my siblings and both my parents, loyal and wanting to support me, had been unable to escape their seats in the auditorium and sat, weak-kneed and heads bowed, as crowds stood and shout-sang their victorious nationhood around them. Most of my family were in tears by the end, and all of them were miserable and frightened. My truthful and understated remark on Desert Island Discs, that the song made many of us 'uncomfortable' was greeted with an uproarious wave of censure and horror against me in the media, and an unguarded uprising of racist bile on social media. People called for me to be 'tagged, flogged and deported', to 'go back home' and to ''keep my mouth shut'. Extreme, inflammatory reactions such as these operate on the same spectrum as the indignant, offended responses I also received. It didn't matter how I felt, or how non-white people feel. It didn't matter that we suffered, were excluded or frightened by a nationalism we couldn't share. If we wanted to stay at the centre and apex of our most prestigious classical music festival, proudly broadcast nationally on Saturday evening television and radio, our voices had to be fervently and bitterly silenced. Then if playing classical music is an exercise in self-denial, role play and dishonesty, so many of us remain on the outside. This is an edited extract from The Power of Music: How Music Connects Us All by Sheku Kanneh-Mason, published by Viking (£16.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy from Delivery charges may apply. 'Music is never fixed in me' … cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason talks to Charlotte Higgins
The Guardian
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Music is never fixed in me' … cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason on surviving a ‘volcano of racism'
I saw Sheku Kanneh-Mason's cello case before I saw him – strapped to his back, making him taller. While we talked, the instrument sat beside us, like a temporarily silent twin. A few weeks before, though, I'd heard it sing in the Barbican, London, as he swept through Shostakovich's first cello concerto with the Czech Philharmonic, the piece with which he won BBC Young Musician nine years ago. It is hard to believe Kanneh-Mason is still only 26: he is touring with some of the best orchestras and conductors in the world, has an MBE, is a visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music, and, for the two billion people who watched, is the young cellist who played at the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's wedding. He is also the most celebrated young Black musician in Britain, famously one of seven talented musical siblings, and was a hugely popular performer at the Last Night of BBC Proms in 2023. But when he appeared on Desert Island Discs last year, he was asked if he thought Rule, Britannia! ought to be part of the festival finale. Quietly, but without hesitation, Kanneh-Mason said: 'No.' In his debut book, The Power of Music, he recounts what happened next: 'My truthful and understated remark … was greeted with an uproarious wave of censure and horror against me in the media, and an unguarded uprising of racist bile on social media.' He had stumbled on an 'ice-hard determination', he writes – the book is a mix of autobiography and musical manifesto – to preserve a place for a deeply troubling song. Its 'vigour and intent were born in Britain's burgeoning slave trade and at the height of its thundering imperialism', he writes. His remark let loose a 'volcano of racism'. On social media people called for him to be 'tagged, flogged and deported' and to 'keep [his] n***er mouth shut'. He finds it, he tells me now, 'very scary and sad, how angry and aggressive people can be about attacking groups of people'. The tidal wave of hate, he says, was 'disproportionate to the intensity of the comment I made. It just came from the heart. I didn't want to attack anyone with it.' All that, directed towards this gentle, unconfrontational young man. How did he and his family cope, I ask. 'I spoke to lots of other musicians who reached out,' he says. 'I find practising and playing always helpful. If there are things I am struggling with, that's the one place I can always be. Exploring something wonderful, beautiful and interesting.' Since we spoke, the Proms programme for 2025 has been announced. He is not performing, for the first time since 2017 (pure coincidence, say the BBC and his agent). In The Power of Music, he writes about playing in a way that is so grounded, joyous and straightforward that anyone who has had the good fortune to make music with others – choir, school band, amateur chamber group – will feel his words resonating. In his telling, his upbringing was less of a hothouse environment than one in which music was as much part of life as eating or playing football. He writes of the 'energetic conversation and teasing battle' of performing duo sonatas with his eldest sibling, pianist Isata, as if music-making was an extension of the babble round the dinner table. He now flat-shares in London with his brother, violinist Braimah, and their friend Plínio Fernandes, a guitarist – he likes to come home to a busy, sociable household, he says. Practice wasn't lonely, even though it was done alone, because they were all doing it. 'It wasn't some big project,' he says of the family's musicianship. 'My parents love music, and they loved learning instruments as children, and so they wanted us to also do that. It became clear very quickly that Isata was very into it and enjoyed it, and then the rest of us kind of followed on from that.' He adds: 'My parents also like the idea of learning something that you can do endlessly. You can constantly practise and explore and get more from music. And that's such a universe to give a child.' And yet, they were often the only Black children in the room, or concert hall, or masterclass. It could cut both ways, Kanneh-Mason tells me: at times, it made him 'very determined to therefore be on that stage'; at other times it made him feel that he wasn't sure he could. 'But my family, and particularly my parents, were very helpful, either talking to us very honestly or shielding us, depending on what was appropriate,' he says. In The Power of Music, he writes: 'The dominant image of a classical musician when I grew up did not look like me. It was difficult to find a projection of who I might be if I became a professional cellist, but the people around me simply refused to admit this was a barrier.' Now, his presence helps to change that for others, and he is actively involved in sharing what he has achieved with a younger generation (when we speak, he is about to travel to Antigua, where he and his siblings support a youth music project, and he has just written a children's book about an orchestra). It wasn't just the family home where music was fostered. I was surprised to learn from the book how important his Nottingham state school was to his and his siblings' musical formation – after all, he was in London having lessons at the Royal Academy of Music's Saturday school from a young age. But, he tells me, the school was full of music. He loved playing instruments he wasn't so advanced on – bass guitar and trumpet – in bands and for shows, and spent time 'being part of a bigger musical community, and just sharing ideas … Without that I certainly wouldn't be the musician I am.' But after the school was subsumed by a multi-academy trust, and suffered a number of funding cuts, its musical focus dimmed: 'I remember the visceral shock when we witnessed a host of music teachers losing their jobs,' he writes. He donated his £3,000 prize money from his BBC Young Musician award to keep the school's cello lessons going. 'It's completely different now, if I'm honest,' he says. He still has one sister at the school, and visited a couple of years ago. 'Everything is reduced. It's really sad to see. It is unrecognisable. And … it's very difficult, I think, for it to come back.' He passionately argues the case for the arts being available to everyone but, of Arts Council England's recent policy decisions, he writes: 'The idea of spreading funding outside London is laudable if it leads to extra money' but 'ransacking excellence at the centre' seems to 'go directly against the arts'. Despite this, Kanneh-Mason is, he tells me, 'optimistic – just because I am an optimistic person'. Luckily, he says, he has tons of energy. There is so much to do, so much to learn. He relishes the fact that music is mutable, changing, liquid in his hands; the Elgar concerto, for example, is 'never fixed in me … a restless, churning, growing thing'. He loves to draw and paint, he says, and takes a sketchbook with him on tour, using it 'when other people would take out a book'. But when a drawing is done, it's done, he says. Music is different. 'I like the process of building something that you can't see and you can't preserve. And so, you have to constantly keep going further, further.' It is an act of love, of love that lasts a lifetime, and of joy. The Power of Music: How Music Connects Us All, by Sheku Kanneh-Mason, is published by Viking on 1 May. Sheku Kanneh-Mason's new album Shostakovich and Britten is out on Decca Classics on 9 May.
