Of course I grabbed this book as soon as it was published. I interviewed Sheku Kanneh-Mason shortly after he won BBC Young Musician in 2016. Then in 2018 he came to Kent and gave his debut performance of the Elgar cello concerto with the Maidstone Symphony Orchestra. I’ve been the regular reviewer of MSO concerts for many years so I was there. Since then I’ve followed his stellar career and read with interest House of Music: Raising the Kanneh-Masons by his mother, Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason. I’ve also reviewed concerts in which his sisters, Isata or Jeneba Kanneh-Mason have played piano concertos.
And now comes this book which is effectively an impassioned plea for music education for all. Sheku uses the example of his own family – he is famously one of seven and they are all musicians – to show how it can be done. He paints a picture of seven children enjoying lots of noisy fun and laughter but also striving to excel because there’s no point in doing anything half-heartedly. Chamber music, and the interactive communication it requires, becomes a metaphor for family life because they played, and still do, in a range of trios, duos, quartets and, obviously, a septet. They were immersed in music: tapes in the family car, being taken to concerts, participating in festivals and competitions along with singing at church and in choirs. And there was a family concert showcasing work in progress every Sunday afternoon in their hall with the “audience” sitting on the stairs. You are left astonished that none of them ever rebelled although Sheku does hint that there was sometimes some naughtiness behind their parents’ backs and I was almost relieved to learn that he failed Grade 4 theory because he hadn’t bothered to put the work in.
The book, however, isn’t a family memoir. It’s a discursive examination of what music can do, how it communicates and why it matters. And we certainly need it set down like this because funding has been cut to such an extent that in many schools there is now no music at all. Sheku laments that – even at his own former state secondary school in Nottingham which used to be musically very rich – STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects now overpower much of the curricular thinking. And there is no music in the English Baccalaureate – a set of core subjects which, if passed at GCSE gives the student an overarching diploma. Many people see music as a dispensable frivolity, especially in education policy making circles. Sheku visits many schools and meets children who play (where they’re lucky enough to get the opportunity) and some of his anecdotes are heart breaking.
Classical music shouldn’t be marginalised, he argues, although he likes blending it with other forms such as Bob Marley. And he makes the very valid point that having elite players in football teams doesn’t make it an “elitist” game. Football is for everyone and Sheku is personally pretty keen on it. The same should apply to music. Yes, there are some elite players and Sheku, who has done the Beethoven Triple concerto with Nicola Benedetti and Benjamin Grosvenor, knows most of them, but that doesn’t mean the music itself is elitist.
The other thing which the book centres on is “blackness” in music which should be irrelevant but isn’t. Black composers have long been ignored and/or excluded although he observes, thankfully, that the tide is turning now. Far more black composers are being programmed and Errollyn Wallen is Master of the King’s Music. I was horrified, though, at Sheku’s account of the racist abuse which was hurled at him when he commented quite mildly that Rule Britannia at Last Night of the Proms makes him feel uncomfortable.
Sheku was 25 when he wrote this book and he’s 26 now. It reads like the work of someone much older and in places it’s quite world-weary in tone. Now that he has dispensed with his big fluffy hair he even looks a lot older than his years too. He talks about his childhood as if it were much longer ago than it actually is and the vocabulary is highly articulate, formal and sophisticated, considering that he tells us he isn’t good with words but talks, instead, through his cello. Perhaps all that world travel to play in magnificent concert halls hastens maturity. I’m puzzled, though, given his schedules, how he found the time to write it.
Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Pompeii by Robert Harris
