roots1937

The Walker Brothers and Their Legacy: Book Launch at Clapham Library

Clapham library in South London may not sound the grandest of places to launch ‘The Walker Brothers and Their Legacy’ but it was a particularly appropriate venue – this is where Maria Downer’s journey of discovery started three years ago.

Almost three years ago to the day she did a presentation to a group of children, Somali refugees, as part of Lambeth’s Black History Month celebrations. Then, she told them about her father and two uncles, three Black brothers who fought and served in World War One. Since that day, with the help of the Historycal Roots team, she has discovered so much more about the brothers’ story. Enough to fill a book!

At the event she was able to share her personal journey of discovery alongside details of the fascinating (and unique?) story of how the brothers served their country.

The event attracted a wide age range and it was good to see the younger generation represented:

During her talk, Maria discussed the brothers’ ‘legacy’ but, of course, she is part of that legacy herself. One of her sons was able to attend and he brought the youngest descendant of Charles Milton Walker:

That’s one young lady who will never have cause to doubt that Black soldiers fought in the ‘Great War’ as her great grandfather was one of them!

We don’t think there’s any rule that says you can only launch a book once so another event will be taking place at the Guyanese High Commission in November.

Windrush 70

Two thirds of the Historycal Roots team attended the launch event of ‘Windrush 70’.

2018 will mark the 70th anniversary of the arrival of the Empire Windrush at Tilbuty in Kent. On board were almost 500 migrants from the Caribbean, coming to England to help rebuild a country shattered by the effort involved in defeating Hitler. Among the arrivals were people like: Sam King (a future Mayor of Southwark in London); Aldwyn Roberts (better known as the calypsonian, ‘Lord Kitchener’); and Egbert Moore (another calypsonian, ‘Lord Beginner’).

It was a splendid launch event with good food, poetry and music. Arthur Torrington, CBE, and others talked about the Windrush 70 project which aims to identify and document the contributions made to society by 70 individuals who were on the Windrush. One of the men present at the launch was Allan Wilmot, who served his country during World War Two and is still very much in possession of all his faculties at the age of 92. Allan actually arrived in England in 1947 on board the HMS Almanzora but was at Tilbury to meet his brother Harold who arrived on the Windrush.

We are flattered that Arthur Torrington has asked members of the Historycal Roots team to help him on this project.

You can find the Windrush 70 website here: http://www.windrush70.com/

A talk by Gillian Spragg

We attended a talk recently on ‘The Impact of African Music on Classical’.

The presenter, Gillian Spragg, had some interesting points to make. She started with Chevalier St George (‘The Black Mozart’) and discussed, among others, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (who has been called ‘The Black Mahler’). Along the way she also talked about the music of Ignatius Sancho, Dvorak and Delius.

I always feel that if I come away from any presentation having learnt one new thing, the time has not been wasted. Gillian’s talk introduced me to the music of Delius, someone I’d heard of but knew little about. A white composer, born in Leeds of German parents, there was a surprising twist to his life story involving an illegitimate child with a Black woman in Florida. You can find the story in his Wikipedia entry if you want to know more.

Gillian was badly let down by the library’s IT which steadfastly refused to co-operate in spite of much cajoling. IT is the bane of every presenter’s life. I recall an event where my sole responsibility was to play a DVD. It worked perfectly in the trial run but then, for reasons known only to itself, played at the wrong speed when the audience was watching. I didn’t notice at first but when we got to a bit where Arthur Torrington, CBE, was being interviewed to camera on the DVD he came out sounding like Mickey Mouse after an unfortunate accident with some helium. To make it even more embarrassing Arthur was in the room watching.

As any good presenter must, Gillian soldiered on, not allowing the problems to faze her and it was a pleasure to chat to her afterwards.

Chineke! – Letter of the month

At Historycal Roots we like to think of ourselves as ‘championing’ the work of Chineke! Who or what is (are?) Chineke! you may very well ask?

Anyone who attends concerts of so called ‘classical’ music will know that the orchestras are invariably, almost exclusively, made up of White musicians. A Black face on stage is a rarity. Audiences generally tend to reflect this. Even at the popular BBC Prom concerts the number of BME (Black and Minority Ethnic) faces in the audience can usually be counted on the fingers of both hands (sometimes only one hand might be needed).

Chineke! is an orchestra made up almost entirely of BME players. We have been to three of their concerts; twice at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank and once at the Royal Albert Hall when they appeared during this year’s Proms programme. We were sorry that their concert at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall didn’t coincide with one of our visits to that city – especially as they performed a piece by our beloved Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

What is very noticeable about a Chineke! concert is that, as well as the very different appearance of the orchestra, the audience is also predominantly BME and, incidentally, much younger than usual for a classical concert.

This was so noticeable that we felt moved to write to ‘Gramophone’ magazine. Our letter obviously stuck a chord as it was chosen as ‘Letter of the Month’.

Do keep an eye open for any Chineke! concerts in your area, even if you aren’t particularly ‘into’ classical music the Chineke! experience may surprise you.

A very special photograph

A lot of people helped with the production of our book ‘The Walker Brothers and Their Legacy’ (see the ‘Forgotten History’ pages) but one of the nicest surprises was when a photograph of Milton Walker turned up in Guyana. The photo was considered so precious by the family that they didn’t want to entrust it to the postal service and so we had to wait for a relative to visit England and bring it with them.

Maria, co-author of the book, had never seen this photo of her father in his army uniform before so you can imagine how she felt.

It was small, a bit torn and tea stained. But, in spite of these drawbacks it was a wonderful portrait of a young man about to embark on a great adventure. We debated whether to include it in the book as it was (authentic) or whether we should try to get it enhanced to improve the clarity. In the end we opted to enhance the image and that’s what you will see in the book if you buy it. We think we made the right decision but judge for yourself, here are the ‘before’ and ‘after’ images:

The job was entrusted to Stuart Gleave. He described what he did as being a bit like performing a skin graft, copying a ‘clean’ piece of the picture and pasting it in over a damaged area. You can see many examples of his work at http://www.stuartgleavephotography.com/

Book Launch – The Walker Brothers and Their Legacy

Our book about three Black brothers who enlisted with the British West Indies Regiment and served in World War One is now available through this site (see our ‘Forgotten History’ section) or Amazon. The book is co-authored by David Gleave of Historycal Roots and Maria Downer who is the daughter of one of the brothers.

The book opens in Clapham Library, South London, with Maria talking to a group of Somali refugee children about her father as part of a Black History Month event. It goes on to tell the story of the three brothers following them from their birthplace in Barbados, via the colony of British Guiana, to the battlefields of Egypt and Palestine. Only two returned home. The book also tells of a daughter’s search for the truth about the part her father and two uncles played in the war, a search which took her to Marseilles in January 2017 to visit the grave of one of her uncles.

This was truly a ‘world war’ but the role Black people played in it has often been ignored by the history books. This book seeks to play its part in redressing the balance. In telling the story of the three Walker brothers the book makes a unique contribution to the history of Black participation in the war.

A launch is planned, fittingly at Clapham Library, on Friday 27th October and we will publish more details nearer the time.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Exhibition in Birmingham

In Birmingham for a meeting of the Historycal Roots team, we noticed that there was a Samuel Coleridge-Taylor exhibition listed in the city’s Black History Month literature. Meeting over, we dashed to Birmingham University’s leafy Edgbaston campus and made our way to the main library which was where the exhibition was supposed to be. On arrival we were confidently pointed by a librarian in the direction of a display which was …. about Lenin.

Returning to the main desk, a second librarian made several phone calls, checked his computer several times, went for a consultation and finally established that the exhibition was actually at the Fine Arts Institute on the other side of the campus.

Given our interest in ‘hidden history’ we couldn’t help but note the irony.

The Fine Arts Institute did indeed have two display cabinets that contained original scores and programmes (including one signed by both SCT himself and Edward Elgar). It was interesting but, in truth, a little underwhelming. Nor was it very easy to take any decent photos because of the light reflecting off the display cabinets:

Fortunately the Institute had a pretty impressive collection of paintings and we had a good look round, although I admit it did degenerate into a game of ‘spot any representation of Black people’. There were five or six figures depicted, nicely rendered but very much in peripheral roles in the scenes. Here is an example:

The Coleridge-Taylor exhibition was a bit of a missed opportunity but, excuse our cynicism, no doubt someone was able to tick a box to show they had contributed to Black History Month.

Voices Of Black Opera

Generally at Historycal Roots we aim to bring forgotten Black history to light, last night it felt a little bit more like we were involved in making it. That is probably an exaggeration but attending ‘Prelude – Voices Of Black Opera’ did feel a bit like history in the making.

Our involvement with VOBO came about by accident when it turned out that our neighbour from only three doors away is the leading light in The Black British Classical Foundation (this is London where actually speaking to your neighbours is a bit of a rarity!). We were pleased to play a (very) small part in helping Vincent Osborne with the organisation of the concert at the prestigious St John’s, Smith Square.

The concert featured arias and duets from a number of well known operas by the likes of Verdi and Puccini and closed with several negro spirituals. One of the encore pieces (I regret I didn’t catch what it was) was really, spine tingly beautiful. Anyone who likes opera would have loved this event, the singing was magnificent throughout.

You can find out more about Vincent’s work at https://www.bbcf.uk

City of Wooden Houses

One member of the Historycal Roots team attended the book launch for ‘City of Wooden Houses: Georgetown Guyana’. This really is a handsome book, written by Guyanese born, London based architect Compton Davis. The book started out as part of the author’s final year dissertation but has, over a period of 30+ years, become something of a passion.

The photographs in the lavishly illustrated book, all taken by Davis himself, are stunning and they capture the rapidly disappearing wooden architecture of Georgetown, capital of Guyana. Many of the buildings pictured have disappeared since the project started in 1983, swept away by modernisation or simply neglected, falling into disrepair and rotting away in the tropical climate.

The book is available from Amazon, the price is steep at £40 but it would grace any coffee table and the written content is considerably more interesting than many of the books you might browse while sipping a cappuccino.

The event was graced by the company of Guyanese born poet John Agar and his wife and fellow Guyanese poet, Grace Nicholls. Both read poems that resonated particularly well with the mood of the evening. I managed to get a photo of John, if he looks a little startled it may be because I haven’t quite mastered the knack of approaching strangers without appearing like a deranged stalker.

A little off Historycal Roots’ normal track but a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

Happy to help

We don’t really offer a research consultancy service but it’s difficult to resist a challenge!

We were recently able to help someone who contacted us about his father who he believed might have served in World War One. We were able to track the soldier down to the British West Indies Regiment and shared some information about the role that Regiment played in the war (troops from the BWIR served principally in Egypt and Palestine but also in Mesopotamia, Africa and France).

We received a lovely ‘thank you’ card from the gentleman’s wife.

She wrote that: ‘he was not aware of anything about his father, all he knew was that he went to war with the British West Indies Regiment, you can imagine how happy he is to be able to tell his sons, grand children and great grands about his father. He is now trying to get a photo of him in his uniform. Please continue the good work. God bless you.’ A note like that makes the work worthwhile.

This is fairly typical example of the ‘hidden history’ of Black soldiers’ service in the ‘Great War’. We will shortly be publishing a book about three brothers who enlisted from British Guiana (as it was then) and who served in Egypt. The family have unearthed a couple of very interesting photos – it’s amazing what you can find in attics!