Spotlight Noir - Other Opera Chronicles At The V&A

Traverse through centuries of classical music as we unpack 500 years of dismissal, challenge and triumph within opera. Join Onyeka Nubia, writer, law lecturer and historian as he discusses the 'Black Classics: People of African Descent that Shaped Classical Music'. Then immerse yourself in modern classics, as Shirley J Thompson OBE, Reader in Composition and Performance at the University of Westminster presents (live) works from her contemporary operas, telling the lives of black women past and their fight for dignity and equality.'

Black Classics: People of African Descent that Shaped Classical Music - Lecture delivered by Onyeka Nubia
Rock and Roll and the melodies in Blues and Soul are international, as are the Pop and strut in Funk, the spoken word 'spitting' of Hip Hop/Rap and Grime. Reggae and Raga offer an apologia for the world to 'wine' and wail. They have been absorbed into the maelstrom of world consciousness but for people of African descent these forms of music are interwoven with joy and pain, aspirations and fears. Even entertainment is catharsis. But when we think of classical music however, we are sometimes offered a 'sacred' white male space: where the African drum, the African voice or the African composer does not fear to tread. Dr Onyeka Nubia unpicks this fallacy and reveals the African composition and the African composers that throughout history helped to shape 'western' classical music.