Symphonic Legends

In May, Deptford Town Hall became the vibrant setting for "Symphonic Legends: The Stories of a Forgotten Musical History," a groundbreaking event curated by Equity Scholar Joquan Johnson. This initiative, a core part of Johnson's final-year dissertation, brought to life the overlooked legacies of Black British classical musicians from the 18th and 19th centuries through a compelling public exhibition and panel discussion.

The project's primary aim was to challenge exclusionary musical histories, highlighting how music criticism contributed to marginalizing Black British classical musicians. By combining rigorous archival research with public engagement, "Symphonic Legends" demonstrated public musicology as an effective mechanism of redress, promoting more inclusive and ethically sound practices in music historiography.

Reclaiming the Narratives of Trailblazers

The event centered on four extraordinary figures whose contributions have been largely excluded from the dominant narrative of British music history due to structural silences and

historical biases:

• Joseph Emidy (1755 – 1835): An Afro-European violinist, composer, and former enslaved person, Emidy built a respected local musical career in Cornwall. Despite his prominence in the regional press, he faced systemic racial exclusion from national elite spaces, and none of his compositions are known to survive, highlighting a significant historical erasure.

  
  

• George Bridgetower (1778 – 1860): A child prodigy and virtuosic violinist, Bridgetower was hailed by the Prince Regent and even connected to Beethoven, who initially dedicated his "Kreutzer" Sonata to him. Yet, his identity was often racialized and commodified in the press, sometimes overshadowing his musical skill. Cleveland Watkiss MBE, a panelist at the event, brought Bridgetower's story to life, having starred in Julian Joseph's jazz opera about the violinist.

  
  

• Amanda Aldridge (1866 – 1956): Also known by her pseudonym Montague Ring, Aldridge was a renowned vocal teacher and composer of parlour songs, as well as a singer. Despite her significant compositional and teaching career, her achievements were often overshadowed by her famous Shakespearian actor father, Ira Aldridge, and minimized in journalistic accounts that prioritized her affiliations with classical European traditions.

  
  

• Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875 – 1912): This internationally acclaimed composer, educator, and activist gained fame for his cantata Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast. While he received substantial press coverage, it was consistently marked by racialization, economic exploitation, and a framing of his legacy as exceptional. Coleridge-Taylor actively used the press to challenge racist narratives, contrasting sharply with the British press by having his musical genius framed as a political act in Pan-African journals.

A Methodical Approach to History

Joquan Johnson's research, supported by the GARA Fund and the Joe Brown Fund, delved into historical newspapers and magazines to reveal how these publications shaped popular perceptions, often racializing, exoticizing, or omitting these musicians. The project drew upon critical archival theories, including Michel-Rolph Trouillot's formulation of historical silencing and Saidiya Hartman's critical fabulation. These frameworks allowed for a crucial interrogation of what was preserved, lost, and why, viewing the archive not as a fixed record of truth but as a contested site of memory. Hartman's "critical fabulation" was particularly vital when direct documentation was lacking, especially for Emidy and Aldridge, by ethically imagining lived experiences to restore presence without fabricating facts.

The Exhibition and Panel: Engaging the Public

The event featured a curated exhibition and a panel discussion titled "Symphonic Legends: The Stories of a Forgotten Musical History". The exhibition's strategy moved beyond mere biographical recovery, creating a space for audiences to reflect on the historiographical processes that excluded these figures. Each section combined historical documents, quotes, scores, and audio clippings to make visible the "gaps, silences, and racialised framing embedded into historical representation". For instance, Emidy's section heavily relied on mediated sources like James Silk Buckingham's memoir, prompting audience reflection on the limitations of the sources themselves. This approach aligned with curatorial activism, challenging institutional biases and foregrounding underrepresented narratives.

The accompanying panel event, held at Deptford Town Hall – a venue with a history that invites reflection – featured Michal I. Ohajuru, known for the John Blanke Project; vocal teacher and opera singer Cleveland Watkiss MBE; 19th-century musicologist Dr. Tamsin Alexander; and arts management educator Dr. Pauline Muir. Chaired by Joquan Johnson and introduced by Dr. Marl'ene Edwin, the panel explored the challenges of representation in historical and contemporary contexts, modeling public musicology in real-time by valuing memory, performance, and personal narrative alongside academic knowledge.

Powerful Personal Narratives

Panelists shared compelling insights:

• Cleveland Watkiss MBE recounted his challenging but ultimately rewarding experience starring as George Bridgetower in a jazz opera. He described realizing the need to produce a "huge voice" without a microphone, a stark contrast to his jazz background, and felt an "ancestral projection" in understanding Bridgetower's character. He highlighted the ongoing separation between classical and jazz music and called for more celebration of Black classical musicians in mainstream society.

• Dr. Tamsin Alexander discussed her interest in Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a composer whose immense popularity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was largely unknown to her during her own music education. She explained how Coleridge-Taylor navigated his "hybrid identity," being celebrated in England as a national composer while simultaneously embraced in the US, particularly amidst Jim Crow laws, as an example of African excellence. Alexander also stressed the musicologist's role in finding and contextualizing lost scores, acknowledging the economic pressures that sometimes led composers like Aldridge and Coleridge-Taylor to write commercial, and occasionally stereotypical, music.

• Dr. Pauline Muir shared her deeply personal and often traumatic experiences as a Black woman studying double bass at music college in the 1980s, encountering racism and skepticism about her potential. Her journey from performance to academia was driven by a desire to illuminate marginalized histories, such as Black British gospel music, that were unwritten and unknown. She found "healing" in connecting with classical music later in life, dissociating it from past trauma.

A Step Towards an Inclusive Future

Audience members noted the emotional impact of hearing these stories, and many informally discussed never having heard of these Black musicians before. The project not only shared research but actively reframed how histories could be known, promoting "radical inclusion" in content and method.

"Symphonic Legends" refused definitive answers, instead fostering shared questions about how race, power, and institutional neglect shaped these artists' stories. It lays groundwork for future initiatives, including school outreach and further archival research, to challenge academic musicology's boundaries and ensure that "how we remember is just as important as what we remember".

As Dr. Marl'ene Edwin eloquently stated at the event, Joquan Johnson's work is a "powerful contribution as we strive for race equity and to a more inclusive future for the arts". This event serves as a powerful reminder that history is never finished; it's a work in progress, and by actively engaging with it, we build bridges between the past and present, celebrating extraordinary contributions that deserve to be heard and understood.

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Imagine history as a grand, intricate tapestry. For too long, significant threads – representing Black British classical musicians – have been hidden or cut, leaving a distorted picture. "Symphonic Legends" is like meticulously re-weaving those lost threads, not just to mend the tapestry, but to reveal its true, richer, and more complex design for all to see and appreciate.