Spectator.co.uk: Ignatius Sancho, Black Grocer, Wrote During 1780 Riots: ʻThank heaven, it rains; may it increase'

[TOP: Ignatius Sancho: An African Man of Letters; Reyahn King et al.; National Portrait Gallery of the U.K. (1997) BOTTOM: Photo of illustration of 1780 Gordon Riots in London, published by The Spectator, Wednesday, 17 August 2011]

The composer and author Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780) made the transition from slave to grocer, author, abolitionist and composer. Sancho, Britain's first Black voter, is featured at AfriClassical.com. The Spectator, a newspaper in the U.K., today quotes Lucy Inglis, a historian who blogs at http://www.georgianlondon.com/

Wednesday 17 August 2011
London riots in history
Lucy Inglis
“As London burned and property was destroyed in the streets, there were calls to bring in the Army. But this is not 2011, this is the summer of 1780 when London was gripped by a violent and drunken mob during The Gordon Riots. It was a difficult time to be in London: the King was unpopular, the American rebellion was worrying, the Navy was losing to the French. In addition to all this gloom prices were rising out of all proportion and wages were static.”

“As damage to private property spread, rather than just chapels and politicians’ homes, Londonʼs small, well-organised vigilante groups, the neighbourhood militias, came out in force. The city was now divided into the Mob, the spectators, the ruling classes and ordinary people trying to protect their families and property. Then, when all out chaos seemed impossible to avoid, Ignatius Sancho, a black grocer in Westminster wrote, ʻThank heaven, it rains; may it increase, so as to send these deluded wretches safe to their homes, their families, and wives!ʼ”

Dylan Christopher: 'Here in the UK black people do not think they have a place in classical music'

[Dylan Bernard Christopher]

The British composer Dylan Bernard Christopher (b. 1987) has YouTube videos online and left a post in the Guest Book at AfriClassical.com on April 10, 2009:

“Thank you! This site is amazing, because it has opened my eyes, and helped me see that I am not alone. Here in the UK black people do not think they have a place in classical music. It's a shock to them when I try to explain even the Great Beethoven himself wrote a violin sonata for a black musician. I am the only black person on my degree course, it doesn't matter, but it sometimes feels like I am trying to swim against the current. I will be quoting your articles next time, I am approached with negativity."

The Black violinist for whom Beethoven wrote what we know as the Kreutzer Sonata is George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower (1780-1860). Britain was also the home of the escaped slave Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780), who became a prominent writer and an amateur composer. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) was a hugely successful Afro-British composer and conductor who was born in Britain. Born in Belize in 1958, Errollyn Wallen is a Black composer who now lives in Britain. The composer and pianist Eleanor Alberga (b. 1949)  is from Jamaica and is now a resident of Britain as well. This is only a partial listing of Black composers and musicians in the U.K.