Now that she is no longer dependent on public transport in Nottingham, UK, Sheku Kanneh-Mason has a bus named after her. The boy is a hero in the English town where he was born 24 years ago after winning the 2016 BBC award for young musical talent. He was 17 and the first black artist to conquer it after stunning the country on TV with his cello between his legs.
But what was an oddity for many of his countrymen was normal for Sheku. He hadn’t been the one to single-handedly break through yet another racial barrier. It came after his family’s deployment. From his two parents, Stuart, manager of a hotel chain, and Kadiatu, a university professor of literature, and their seven children: all musicians!
As Sheku, third in the house, hit his surge in popularity, the spotlight turned to the Nottingham home, teeming with talent. “I hardly noticed any difference in the music world on a racial level because it was natural for me to grow up with my brothers,” says the performer. The Kanneh Mason band consists of Isata, the eldest, pianist, Braimah, the second, violinist, just like Konya and Aminata, and Jeneba, who like Mariatu, the youngest, plays piano and cello.
Sheku Kanneh-Mason.Francis Tsang
They were soon invited to act in a group at talent shows, where, despite the unbearable eulogy on the radio, which was as overblown as it was empty, discovery occasionally ensued. If the UK knew the family that year, three years later they were being noticed by the whole world. It was after Sheku performed at the wedding of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, Dukes of Sussex, an apparition that went viral from Windsor Castle. The event reached an audience of around 2 billion people. That day, amidst the pomp, slipped in the fresh air of a young black musician, playing the sicilienne cello by Maria Theresa by Paradis, Après un Rêve by Fauré and Ave Maria by Schubert. That didn’t change the mood of the boy, who was focused, grateful, and still aware of his education, even if a week later agents from half the world wanted to work for him. “I know, but I haven’t changed because I already had one,” he says.
By then he had already made his professional debut, but today Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s career is a storm that hasn’t changed the mood of his family much, but luck has. It wasn’t the cellist who started. His older sister, with whom he has already recorded an album for the Decca label as a duet: Muse, with works by Barber and Rachmaninoff, had previously done it. Neither had their parents scrupulously planned that they would devote themselves to music as a livelihood, but very soon the talent of the elders was revealed, and the example of their determination drew the others to the point that four of their components graduated from the Royal Academy of Music in London, so at the highest level.
Although she spends much of her career as a soloist, Sheku Kanneh-Mason prefers to play in chamber groups or with an orchestra. His historical cello heroes are Jacqueline du Pré and Mstislav Rostropovich.Francis Tsang
Score of the “Britten Suite for Cello” performed by Sheku Kanneh-Mason at the Madrid concert. Francis Tsang
Because of their condition, when they were determined to excel at something, it was normal for them to pursue sport, their parents have commented. They, too, have done excellent work. But that barrier had already fallen in his generation. Stuart and Kadiatu recall the trend at the turn of the 21st century for British football teams like themselves to be staffed with players of African and Caribbean descent. Stuart comes from a family from Antigua and Montserrat in America, while Kadiatu’s parents immigrated to England from Sierra Leone in West Africa in the 1970s.
The two also grew up in a musical environment, resulting in them instilling discipline and rigor, as well as the joys of classical music, in their children. But they didn’t always understand them in their environment. Some parents of schoolmates, black and white families, criticized him. They did not believe that this environment was advisable for children of their race. In a joint interview that Helga Davis conducted for Princeton University, the parents recalled these episodes: “When they started to stand out, people said to us: why move on, this is not for black kids.” No, it’s not black Children. “They’re just kids,” Stuart rebelled. Several parents were not afraid to tell the Kanneh-Masons that they were certain to fail and that they were asking too much of them in light of the verdict, leading to a frustration that would ultimately affect their children deeply.
Detail of Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s cello, built by luthier Matteo Goffriller in 1700. Francis Tsang
Somehow that motivated her. “Our duty as parents was to encourage them to take risks and at the same time feel supported by them. We didn’t want them to look back in a few years and regret not trying.” Today, Sheku hardly wants to think about the future. When we ask him where he sees himself in ten years, he replies: “Enjoying music with others better than I do, learning and perfecting myself.”
The last time he toured Spain, he played alone on his 1700 instrument, built by luthier Matteo Gofriller. He chose pieces by Bach and Benjamin Britten, but also works by contemporaries who had written for him, such as the five preludes dedicated to him by Edmund Finnis, alongside others composed by Gwilym Simcock, Leo Brouwer or Gaspar Casado. However, Sheku prefers chamber music and also concerts with orchestra. In all these areas, as teachers who have shaped the history of the instrument, he has his favorite references: Jaquelin de Pré and Mstislav Rostropovich.
Sheku Kanneh-Mason rehearses in Madrid.Francis Tsang
The first work also set new standards and perhaps for this very reason has become the cellist’s greatest inspiration. Her Elgar concerto is difficult to replicate, especially the version she left with John Barbirolli or the concertos she recorded with her husband Daniel Barenboim. Nonetheless, it is the work director Simon Rattle wanted to perform publicly with Sheku and also score for Decca with the London Symphony Orchestra, as Du Pré did at the time. “The experience was incredible, it’s authentic, real and Elgar’s play is my favorite work,” says the interpreter. “First he and I rehearsed on the piano together, then we played football – he’s an Arsenal fan – and then we put on weight. We also recorded it at Abbey Road Studios,” he says.
He must have felt a little unsafe there, not just because it was the place where the Beatles locked themselves and later all of iconic British pop and the country’s great orchestras. Also because Elgar himself had inaugurated it in 1931. The walls of Abbey Road are walls whose soundproofing systems are deafening under the weight of their own history. The fact of doing it alongside Rattle, a musician with a very modern mentality and exceptional charisma, who took the Berliner Philharmoniker into the 21st century and transformed their German essence into a radically cosmopolitan ensemble, would also weigh on him. The director of Liverpool renewed it with top-class musicians from very different backgrounds. A perfect teacher to guide Sheku and take him by the hand into a world still anchored in the past and in dire need of a racial miscegenation bath to survive.
As a result, the cellist has become a global icon, in high demand at various venues around the world. Asia and Latin America are now strongly integrated into the circle. The refreshing phenomena, which have led to references such as the Venezuelan Gustavo Dudamel in conducting or the Chinese Lang Lang and Yuja Wang on the piano, have drawn a multitude of new talents from their environment into the auditoriums. Sheku doesn’t want to feel pressured by his African heritage, even though he considers himself deeply British. But understand the parallelism. Figures of his race were missing on the racetrack. “It makes me happy, every time someone young comes up to me and tells me that I’ve been an inspiration to them, it fills me with joy.” Although I’d rather not think about it,” he says.
Sheku Kanneh-Mason rehearses at the National Auditorium in Madrid where she performed last March.Francis Tsang
He’s comfortable and aware that he’s a conspicuous newcomer to the stages he takes on, even if he sometimes dons a protective anti-pressure layer at an age when overtaxing can be fatal to his career can. “Sometimes I confess that I’ve felt strange, sometimes out of place. But my connection to music is so strong that I consider myself a part of this world in a very deep way. I also had teachers who gave me that sense of belonging.”
This was not only the case at home, but also in Nottingham, where he learned simply by listening to others in the city’s concert hall. “Growing up there was good, you can feel the connection to the small town community. There is no orchestra but we have a large concert hall that offers cheap tickets. We went a lot since we were little, almost every week, it was the best way to get to know the repertoire.”
Perhaps, to their great regret, they carry the burden of being a role model not only in their own case, but in their entire family. So tells her mother in House of Music, Raising the Kanneh-Masons, the book she published in 2021. In it, Kadiatu tells how they not only had to make an effort and become aware of being a role model, but also prepare themselves to know how to resist and never, because so stop being nice. “A quality that is in short supply these days,” says his mother.
Also or especially to enjoy without hectic. Not feeling complexes of any kind or that this is forbidden ground for them. That would make her give up. And in the Kanneh Mason house, they don’t put their arms down. In a way, they believe they can change the world. “I’m repelled by inequality and racism, and everything that comes with it confuses and frustrates me,” says Sheku. Same as with Brexit. “I hate it. I couldn’t vote in the referendum, I wasn’t even 18 years old, but for us this decision poses a problem every day, it makes life more difficult for us, not to mention me and so many young people of my generation feel European, showing your passport to leave my country is a step backwards.”
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