The Music of Ignatius Sancho: The Arts as Black Resistance in 18th-Century London

The Black British writer Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780) is known today primarily as the author of an extensive correspondence, published posthumously, which used a sentimental, "conversable" literary style to criticize and disrupt the dehumanization of Black people in Britain as well as the British Empire as an engine of the African slave trade. Less widely known are the books that Sancho actually prepared for publication himself: five volumes of music—one book of songs and four of instrumental dance pieces published in the 1760s and 1770s—which made him the first Black man to publish his original musical compositions. In this concert with commentary, the Raritan Players demonstrate how Sancho drew on the musical tropes of polite, upper-class society to awaken the British public to the evils of slavery and call for their adherence to a higher moral standard. This program, to be performed on period instruments, demonstrates how Sancho used the arts as a vehicle of Black resistance.