Chi-chi's Olympic hopes were destroyed when she was injured
in a freak sporting accident, but she is now a classical performer.
Photo: Eric Richmond
Sergio A. Mims writes:
Chi-chi Nwanoku interview in Irish Independent
Sergio
Irish Independent
Published 14/11/2016
The home of classical musician Chi-chi Nwanoku offers a glimpse into the
mind of a person driven to the greatest heights of excellence in their
field.
For one thing, it is immaculate. "I'm fastidious," she admits, miming
obsessive wiping of kitchen surfaces. She is also, "a very literal
person. If someone says 'play that staccato', you won't hear it played
shorter." Then, of course, there is her double bass in the front room -
the oversized instrument, "a man's instrument" as she was told when she
started out, seeming cartoon-ish here, despite the tall ceilings of her
elegant Victorian terraced semi.
After you have taken in Nwanoku's jaunty, jewel-coloured afro, and
the surprise of her bright turquoise eyes, the most striking thing about
her is her energy. She is, she says, only five feet tall. But she is a
woman clearly driven by a relentless, indefatigable energy.
"People
are shocked how much I get through in a day," she says. Her engine is
curiosity, coupled with a healthy competitive streak - both of which
have been her defining characteristics since she was a child.
Nwanoku's talent and determination have carried her to the very heart
of the British cultural establishment, but it's been a long and rather
improbable journey to get there.
She was born in Fulham, London,
the eldest daughter of an Irish nurse and Nigerian medical student.
Mixed race couples were an anomaly at the time and her parents faced
enormous prejudice, both from society and closer to home, within their
extended family. They were economic migrants to the capital of the
British Empire at a time when landlords routinely posted signs reading
"no blacks, no Irish, no dogs." But her parents' love flourished and
endured for 50 years until they died. It was through witnessing her
parents' bond, that Chi-chi's own iconoclasm was formed.
She clearly adored them. Her father died 12 years ago and her mother
two years later, and even now, when she talks about them, tears flow. "I
get upset when I talk about my parents," she says. "I miss them so
much... I was completely demented when dad died and my mother went
downhill soon after." They were, she says "happy people," and the house
she grew up in a joyful one.
"They loved each other so much and
they loved us so much. I think I've always been filled with this sense
of justice, because they both felt the strong arm of injustice."
She relishes telling the story of how they met, at a dance in the
Hammersmith Palais, where Margaret and her friend, disgruntled that none
of the men there had asked them to dance, were in the cloakroom about
to leave, "when my dad walked in with an African friend. A minute later
and they would never have met. My father just took one look at her and
said, 'where are you going?' I was born a year later. They never parted
from that moment. It was literally love at first sight. My mother had
never even spoken to a black man before. I mean, he was a great dancer.
And every photo that you see of them, they are dancing. They danced all
through my life."
Chi-chi herself hasn't been quite so lucky in
love. She got married, aged 30 to Tim Hugh, who is joint principle
cellist of the London Symphony Orchestra. They have two children but
divorced eight years later. "We both come from big families. Getting
divorced, neither of us were used to that. We're both used to parents
who stuck together, so it was hard to go through that. It was painful,"
she admits. The pair remain firm friends however, and are deeply
involved together in the lives of their son and daughter, who are in
their late 20s.
Chi-chi is someone who knows instinctively the value of family bonds.
She was not yet a year old when her younger brother was born, and twins
followed swiftly after. Then there were two more sets of twins who
tragically died, before the smallest sister arrived. At one stage, there
were four siblings under the age of two-and-a-half. It must have been
chaotic, but they were "an incredibly close family." This was partly
because they were isolated together - far from Michael's sprawling
Nigerian family, and distanced from Margaret's Irish one.
Chi-chi's mother was born on the
Limerick/Tipperary border and grew up in Thurles. When she left Ireland,
she left behind "a very, very hard, hard life" and a childhood during
which she had a very difficult time. Chi-chi skips over the particulars,
saying instead she is full of gratitude and admiration for her mother -
who was strong enough to keep the impact of those traumas contained,
never allowing the taint of them to impair her relationships with her
own family.
She was, Chi-chi says, an "incredible woman. She was a disruptor from
day one... She was asking questions from day one in a Catholic school.
And then she would be beaten for that. She asked questions all the time,
she challenged everything."
To her mother, the new life she made
with her smiley African husband must have seemed a refuge. And it didn't
matter that "there was very little money when we were growing up." The
family ate things like bread and dripping and pig's trotters at home,
and the five kids looked forward to the free school lunches at their
local grammar school, but "we didn't feel poor, because our lives were
full and rich and creative. We didn't have toys but we made our own
games and we had much more fun than most kids. There was never a dull
moment in our house."
Theirs is a classic tale of immigrant striving and grit. In order to
pay for music lessons for her children, Margaret went off to work at
night. The children were never explicitly pushed, but it was clear to
all of them that expectations were high. "As a black child, or a mixed
race child, I don't think any child of colour growing up in a country
like this with half-decent or self-respecting parents, I think every
single one of us is told, "Whatever you want to do in life, it's not
going to be enough to be as good as the next person. You have to be
better. So there has always been that underlying pressure."
Athletics
was Chi-chi's first love. She was just eight when she was spotted on a
running track by a sprint coach who talent-scouted her with a mind to
grooming her into an Olympic champion. "That coach, he'd had meetings
with my parents, my teachers, my headmaster, before I knew anything
about it," she says. For almost 10 years, she trained intensively. "I
liked winning races. I didn't know that at the time, but it just gave me
huge pleasure. I think I was born a performer. I performed on the
track, that was my first stage, if you like."
It all came to an abrupt end however, when one day she volunteered to
play in a women's football match and a freak accident - she dislocated
her knee after a rough tackle - extinguished her dreams in seconds.
She
still gets upset about it today. The ghosts of a lifetime of "what ifs"
still linger. "There are still tears for me when I watch athletics,"
she says. "I am now 60, and I retired at the age of 17. And the last
official times I was running were 11.8, and getting faster all the time.
Now, I'm watching the Olympics, and OK, the women are now getting down
to 10-something, but most of them are around the late 11s."
It's
rare enough to have one burning passion, one outstanding talent. But
Chi-chi had another up her sleeve. She had always been obsessed with
learning music, taking up the recorder as a very young child with almost
puzzling dedication, and pestering her neighbourhood friend's older
brother to teach her to play the piano. As soon as he had, she turned up
at his house every day to play - to the extent that eventually the
boy's mother wheeled the instrument down the street and gifted it to
her.
She had the luck too to have two enlightened mentors - the
headmistress and the head of music at her grammar school put their heads
together after her accident and came to her saying, "Chi-chi look, you
are by far the most musical person in the whole school. You could have a
career in music but you don't play an orchestral instrument... we
completely believe that you could have a career as a professional
musician if you took up an unpopular instrument." It was in that moment
that her love affair with the double bass was born.
She hasn't
looked back since. She studied at the Royal Academy and soon after
became a classical performer of international reknown, playing as
principle soloist with the world's best orchestras. She also presents a
show on BBC Radio 3. Her achievements are too hard-won for her to be coy
about them. There is no nonchalance as she reminds me that her full
title is Chi-chi Nwanoku MBE (she received the honour in 2001).
She
beams with pride too, when she talks about her most recent project -
the 'Chineke! Orchestra', Europe's first black and ethnic minority
orchestra, which has been taking the classical music world by storm.
Chi-chi knows that her career would never have happened were it not for
key people who intervened to encourage and channel her talents. "If I
was the child I was then, now, I would be one of those children who
would be told I've got ADHD and I need drugs to control me in the
classroom. I was bouncing off the walls, I had more curiosity and energy
than was good for me. I needed to know everything, I wanted to be in
everything. And I was fascinated by everything that was going on inside
the classroom and outside the classroom."
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