Barbados' oldest sheet music to unlock enslaved people's voices
The manuscript is the world’s oldest surviving music from the Caribbean island.
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The manuscript includes the world’s oldest-surviving sheet music from Barbados, capturing voices of enslaved people working in the sugar plantations.
It was placed in Gloucestershire Archives in the 1970s, and listed in the UNESCO Memory of the World register in 2017.
It is part of the Beating Back The Past project, which will also feature an installation of textiles, photographs and music.
Rider Shafique, a Gloucestershire musician of Barbadian descent, and Vanley Burke - commonly known as the godfather of black British photography - will head up the project, which will explore the transatlantic slave trade from their point of view.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4nn97yw42ro
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