Page 120 - Final_RPS Awards 2020 Media Coverage Book

11 June 2020

What role can music play in eradicating prejudice?

Martin Cullingford, Gramophone Editor
Let us listen - and shine a light on the shared nature of humanity

The Chineke! Foundation, here receiving the RPS Gamechanger Award, have been inspirational in increasing diversity
and inclusion (photo: Mark Allan)

The killing of George Floyd in America has brought the horror of racism to the forefront of public
discourse once more. Which is where, for so long as it exists, it needs to be. If there is injustice

and prejudice, it is right that everyone seeks to root out such hatred, and implore all to recognise
the shared nature of humanity.

Everyone I know of in the music world will share this belief. Few things are as capable of crossing
the boundaries of background as music - an abstract art form which speaks to the deepest part of

our soul, and beyond, and which knows neither division nor distinction when it comes to the colour
of skin. And yet many of our artists feel a particular pain right now, a point powerfully made in the

recent Facebook Live from the Kanneh-Masons, which they dedicated to the memory of George
Floyd. It was introduced by the mother of this extraordinary family of young musicians, who offered
the inspiring words: ‘Music is a testament to suffering, to hope and to love. Let it be a testament to

change’.

People around the world are calling for that change, protesting in their thousands, and even
reassessing their relationship to history. Classical music's past relationship to race-relations has

not always been a positive one, though that's arguably true of most art forms or social structures