DR. LUIS DIAS
The BBC Proms classical music festival began in London (and a few other locations in the U.K.) in mid-July, and I’ve been listening to audio podcasts online a day later for convenience due to the
time difference.
As ever, there is so much to delight in, and learn, from old works of music and new, and as always, about far more than the realm of music.
The programme (BBC Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Gianandrea Noseda) on July 20, had Beethoven’s mighty Ninth Symphony in its second half, always a crowd-puller and an annual fixture at each Prom. The concert began with Johann Sebastian Bach’s Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, BWV 542 orchestrated by the much-loved British conductor Sir Andrew Davis (1944-2024) with a long association with the Proms.
It was followed by the U.K. premiere of a BBC co-commissioned new work, ‘These Righteous Path’s, by American violinist, composer, chamber musician, and music educator Jessie Montgomery. It is a cello concerto, written for and in close dialogue with South African cellist, singer, composer and improviser Abel Selaocoe.
Montgomery wrote the work as an outpouring of grief and tribute to her recently deceased mother, the poet, playwright, director, performer, professor, and civil rights activist Robbie Mc Cauley (1942-2021). It is a part of a series of works inspired by McCauley’s plays and poems, reflected not just in the title of the concerto itself, but also its three movements (1. ‘All the Ancestors and ‘I; 2. ‘Another Train Poem: Part 1, Georgia and the Foreman; Part 2, Up South’; and finally, 3. ‘A New Song’) as well.
She specifically chose Selaocoe above other cellists, as she explained in her programme note, for “his unique palette of cellistic and vocal capabilities. The orchestration traverses many stylistic influences that I associate with Abel’s voice—baroque continuo, song-writing, Afro-centric rhythms and melodies, virtuoso classical performance, and improvisation, to name a few”.
Selaccoe’s palette of capabilities found full expression, called upon to sing and play simultaneously in this truly haunting concerto.
Speaking to BBC Radio 3 presenter Martin Handley before the concert, Selaccoe described the sound-world in this work as “intensely lyrical, beautifully operatic but also full of imagery (the trains in the second movement), ideas of hope. And also, ideas of some of the Big Ancestors that have come before us, the orators, the Martin Luther Kings who can speak in the most operatic way, and can pull people to believe in the cause of freedom and fight for it”.
Montgomery also acknowledged the powerful influence of ancestors in her programme note: “The form struggles to be contained yet relaxes into grooves and sometimes uncannily familiar melodies. While writing, I often found myself asking, ‘Have I written this before?’ Sometimes I think it is simply confirmation from past lives, ancestral nudges forward, as if to say: ‘Yes, we are here. Keep going. You must keep going’.”
Selaccoe and Montgomery were also bound together by a concept I hadn’t known of before, that I found both intriguing and comforting.
‘Sankofa’ means ‘to retrieve’ (literally ‘go back and get’; san – to return; ko – to go; fa – to fetch, to seek and take) in the Akan language of Ghana. Sankofa is symbolised by a bird with its feet and body facing forward but its head is looking backwards, “looking at its ancestors”, in Selaccoe’s words. It represents the need to reflect on the past to build a successful future.
‘These Righteous Paths’ spoke to me on so many levels. Like Montgomery, I too am grieving the fairly recent demise of my own mother Dr. Elvira Dias (1932-2024). Although the profound ‘Sankofa’ concept has its origin in Ghana, it reminded me of the Afrikander ancestry in me through my mother (Nairobi Kenya, quite a far remove from Ghana on the opposite coast of the vast sprawling African continent).
At a personal level, I cannot help but be constantly reminded about my ancestors. Although I wasn’t born here, I have lived the longest in the house Casa da Moeda bought by my great-grandfather Gen. Dr Miguel Caetano Dias (1854-1936) in 1904. His statue greets me every morning as I step onto my verandah. His degrees and diplomas and those of his eldest son Col. Dr. Victor Manuel Dias (1892-1949) hang directly overhead as I write this. My ancestors’ pictures grace the walls; their books and writings cram our bookshelves almost to a fault.
Montgomery’s programme note taught me, that I should be encouraged rather than daunted by their ever-present reminders, that I too should feel them prod me forward, as if to say: “Yes, we are here. Keep going. You must
keep going.”
In other words, like the Sankofa bird, look forward with optimism while looking back for inspiration and encouragement from
my ancestors.
I was particularly moved by the short yet powerful poem that inspired the last movement of ‘These Righteous Paths.’ Selaccoe said its feels like something McCauley might have casually said to her daughter in the kitchen: “I want a new song, beautifully sung, About something more. Not all the songs before; Lost love and closing doors. Not the same old rhymes; Same old times of death and war. A new, new, new song, is what I’m longing for.”
Although not explicitly stated as such, the reference to “a new song” is clearly a Biblical allusion, appearing in Psalms 96 and 98.
But when you juxtapose this poem with the concept of Sankofa, there is a much bigger message to each of us, at an individual, state, country and global level. It can be applied to our situation in Goa, and more widely to all India and the whole world.
The “old song, the same old rhymes” some of us have been singing ad nauseam about our collective past, of selective erasure of some “inconvenient” histories and uncomfortable truths, or turning the clock back only to where the most political mileage and the most venom can be extracted for electoral gain or to constantly “otherise” (whether within our borders or across them), is tiresome, energy-draining and counterproductive. It only begets anew the “same old times of death and war”, letting wounds fester and never heal. “Lost love and closing doors.”
A “new, new, new song” of forgiveness, of being able to look back like the Sankofa bird at the ancestors we justly valorise, but also on our collective past with all its traumas without rancour, but with a renewed energy to build an all-inclusive better future, is what we should all long for. I certainly do.
In Selaccoe’s memorable encore, he invoked “the spirit of wellness, getting there together and not alone”. He gently turned the capacity audience at London’s Royal Albert Hall into a massive prayerful choir, as he led them in ‘Moya Fola’ from his native South Africa. A deeply spiritual soothing phrase, it roughly translates to ‘heal my soul’ or ‘calm my spirit’. It was “a new song, beautifully sung”.
It was the perfect curtain-raiser to Friedrich Schiller’s ‘Ode to Joy’ and the paean to universal brotherhood ‘Alle Menschen werden Bruder’ (‘All people become brothers’) in Beethoven’s Ninth that followed it.
