Abolition Song and its Legacies
Handel Hendrix House is proud to be a partner in an academic project documenting and exploring previously overlooked history and music, led by the Guildhall School of Music & Drama with the British Library.
From 1787 to c1830 an array of British composers, professional and amateur, male and female, participated in the Abolitionist movement by creating anti-slavery song. Abolition Song and its Legacies (ASaiL) brings this repertory to modern-day academics and audiences for the first time. By digitizing scores, and by twinning six academic seminars with six live recorded concerts, ASaiL provides access to anti-slavery song, facilitates its cross-disciplinary scholarly interrogation, and shows how performance can alter our understanding of music otherwise known only from historical documents. Funded by an AHRC Curiosity Award, ASaiL is 24-month project hosted by Guildhall School of Music & Drama, with partner institutions the British Library and Handel Hendrix House.
Our contribution to the project is to host a series of performances at Handel Hendrix House. These performances are given by the ASaiL Collective, a group specialising in the project's music. Members are (in alphabetical order): countertenor Biraj Barkakaty, keyboardist and composer Daniel Lee Chappell, coloratura soprano Shafali Jalota, harpsichordist and composer Nathaniel Mander, soprano and songwriter El Rashid, and keyboardist Yihan Zhao.
The next ASaiL performances will be held at Handel Hendrix House on the evening of Monday 19th May 2025 and Monday 8th September 2025. These performances are by invitation only, but requests to attend can be sent to [email protected]
