During 24 months, Abolition Song and its Legacies ('ASaiL') will probe the previously unknown repertories of British Abolition song (1788-1830s)and music associated with Britain's Black communities until 1830.Partner institutions Goldsmiths Dept of Music, the British Library ('BL'),and the Handel Hendrix House ('HHH') will collaborate to digitise this forgotten music, facilitate research into it, and bring it to public performance and recording.

Abolition song consists of c70 high-style airs promoting Abolitionism. Though composed for private and public concerts, the reach of these airs was transatlantic: at least 20 were exported to the United States.Abolition song is a fraught performance text, often portraying ‘the African’ as without culture and dependent on White salvation. Yet it is crucial to understanding anti-slavery debates, and as the protest song of its day argued for Africans’ needs and rights as these were then understood. It followed on from Black artists’ performances in British concerts from the 1780s onwards, and Black communities’ musical presence generally in Britain since the 16th century.

Through its interlocked work packages, ASaiL will research, publish, perform, and record these repertories. The first package will produce BL-digitised scores with metadata following Inclusive Descriptive Practice. The second package will consist of six seminar days (one per term) with a 12-member network of scholars, three each from music, literature, history, and the visual arts. A senior scholar in each discipline will mentor two more junior scholars; working with scores and audio recordings provided by PI Berta Joncus, junior scholars will research, debate, and present transdisciplinary findings about Abolition song and Black heritage music. The ASaiL scholars’ network will apply to Goldsmiths Press to publish its outputs as an on-line book with sound fi es. The third package will prepare and perform six concerts at the HHH featuring Abolition song and Black heritage music. ASaiL artistic director Joseph McHardy will invite six musicians to each prepare one concert per term. The three-hour group rehearsal for each concert will be a workshop for all six musicians, at which early career research practitioners will train them in practice research. Network scholars will attend each concert, which will end with a Q&A and be recorded by a Goldsmiths audio technician.

Research findings will also be disseminated through ASaiL-dedicated pages in the BL’s Discovering Music web environment, and for toolkits/education packs for use in BL, HHH, and Goldsmiths community/school engagement programmes.

Aims:

1. To make Abolition song and pre-1830 music associated with Britain's Black communities accessible through digitisation and concerts.

2. To investigate how Abolition song positioned itself vis-à-vis concurrent music of Black British communities, musical representations of Black dramatis personae onstage, and the Black
virtuosi leading British concerts.

3. To explore, through academic and practice research, various narratives promoted by Abolitionism.

4.To train musicians in practice research, thereby developing their ability to negotiate the problems of race theory raised by Abolition song and pre-1830 music about Blackness.
Beneficiaries will be scholars, professional musicians, and general audiences engaging with ASaiL concerts and outputs, all of which will be open access.

Start date October 2024

Duration 24 months

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/35398