Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason
The award-winning author on her memoir House of Music: Raising the Kanneh-Masons and three recommended books about music
Credit: Jake Turney
One of my favourite recent memoirs is Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason’s House of Music: Raising the Kanneh-Masons, so when I decided to start this newsletter, I immediately hoped I’d be able to interview her. Over the past few years, thousands of words have been written about the Kanneh-Mason family, some of which I’ve penned myself for newspapers and magazines, but it was another thing entirely to read Kadiatu’s account of her life, the family that she came from, and the family that she and her husband Stuart have created.
Her book is honest and warm, and while it never shies away from painful topics, it is filled with music and love. I also found her style of storytelling, which layers up memory and music, using it to move between time and place, individual and effective. Kadiatu has a unique story to tell but, for me, it was the way in which she told it, in her own words, that made this book special.
House of Music is Kadiatu’s story – but it is also the tale of a family. A former lecturer in English at the University of Birmingham, she is the mother of seven children, all hugely gifted and talented musicians, now aged between 13 and 26. Perhaps you’ve seen them on TV – whether that was on the Saturday-night contest of Britain’s Got Talent or the remote-access Imagine documentary about their family life during lockdown. Perhaps you hung on every note cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason played when he won the BBC Young Musician competition in 2016, the first black British performer to do so, or maybe you heard him playing at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
If so, you may well have wondered, how did this remarkable musical family come about? Kadiatu’s memoir is the answer. It traces her journey from her birth in Sierra Leone, her move at a young age to South Wales, her life and career after meeting Stuart Mason, whom she later married, at Southampton University, and then the arrival of their seven children, creating a house filled with music.
I loved talking to Kadiatu about her relationship with music and words, and the writing about music that has inspired her. This is the first interview in the series, and as you’ll see the format is framed around three pieces of music writing the interviewee loves (or loathes), which can be anything from reviews to books, and about any style or genre of music. And, just finally, if you haven’t already, I’d urge you to read her memoir, which has won all sorts of accolades and a Royal Philharmonic Society award.
House of Music: Raising the Kanneh-Masons by Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason
Rebecca Franks (RF): Have you always written?
Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason (KKM): Yes, I think I have. Not necessarily about music, because I was an academic in English, but essays and articles about other people’s writing: poetry, novels and critical theory. But it’s interesting, because when you suggested this [interview], I began to think about it a lot more. In literature and poetry, there’s a huge amount about music. It’s actually quite difficult to get away from, so I’ve inadvertently but not directly been writing about music.
RF: In your memoir there’s a wonderful passage where you describe the first piano that you had, as a child in South Wales: ‘My dream came true and the old upright piano, with discoloured keys that smelled of warm wood and endless possibilities, now stood in the middle of our living room’. Could you give a sense of your journey with music?
KKM: I suppose I’ve more thought about music than written about it. Because I wasn’t classically trained as in depth as my children – I can read music, I have grade five theory and I’ve studied for grade eight piano, so I’ve got a working knowledge – my approach is more emotional, through poetry and literature, rather than through the technical aspects. When I’ve listened to my children playing or gone to concerts, I’ve entered music through translation. My children could sit there and say, oh, this is the key of B flat major, this is how the music is modulating, that kind of thing. I don’t think in those mathematical terms at all. And when you see how people write about music, they approach it in very different ways.
RF: There’s always a balance, isn’t there. Not overloading the writing with technical language, trying to convey the experience of the music, making it understandable and accessible to the reader…
KKM: Of course, there’s that whole thing, which some people attribute to Elvis Costello, that ‘writing about music is like dancing about architecture’. So you’re always in translation in some way. My children probably think if you’re going to talk about music, talk about music via music. And I think that’s important. But also you’ve got to do two different things at the same time. I love it when people speak to me about keys and modulations and explain what the chords are doing, because it opens up a whole new dimension in the music, but I also want to know why it matters. It’s emotional and it’s part of a story. I think all these different things have to be brought together. That’s my ideal kind of music writing.
I love it when people speak to me about keys and modulations and explain what the chords are doing, because it opens up a whole new dimension, but I also want to know why it matters
RF: I’m glad that you’ve mentioned ‘dancing about architecture’, because it’s often quoted in a negative sense, as if writing about music is pointless. But to me it’s a beautiful thing. I love the idea.
KKM: I agree. Writing about music says so much. It says a lot culturally, about different historical periods, about personality. That’s what I wanted to highlight as well in the three pieces of music writing I’ve chosen. That it’s so culturally inflected. There’s so much debate about music and who it belongs to, where it’s from and why it matters. It’s all there, in different people’s writing about music.
RF: What was it like to sit down and write your memoir, in which music is such an important theme?
KKM: It had to be completely subjective, autobiographical and emotional. And the music has to do with how it affects life. I had to approach it in this very particular way. I couldn’t write as a musician, in those terms. I had to write it the way that I heard it or experienced it.
RF: Music and memory often have such a strong relationship. Did you find that the two were interlinked when you were writing the book?
KKM: I think music is memory in the same way that taste and smell are. For me, smell, taste and music are the three biggest things that are memory. Visual aspects are mapped on to that. And with the children, it’s that different pieces are from different times. If I hear Schubert’s Trout Quintet, it takes me immediately back to driving them to swimming lessons.
RF: One of the themes of House of Music is home. Early on, you write about the racism you faced in South Wales, where you moved with your Welsh mother after your Sierra Leonean father died. You write that ‘as an immigrant to the UK I had always felt as though home was a place based on loss’, and that you didn’t want that to be the case for your children. It struck me that music has been one element that you have taken from your childhood that’s filled their home. I wondered if you’d be happy to talk about that?
KKM: Yes, and that’s so true. And there were lots of stories I didn’t really want to tell, and stories that were just there underneath, which came out in the music. The way that Stuart and I gave our children our cultural background was definitely through music. The music we’d heard as children and from our own countries and backgrounds, but also things that moved me or belonged to certain memories. I think you can say a lot more through music that you don’t want to say upfront. Also, with music, you’re always saying something. You’re always expressing. You’re always allowing things not to be silenced by simply having the gates open to music and being responsive to that.
RF: That leads us onto your first choice…
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson
Penguin Classics (first published in 1912)
KKM: It’s James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, from 1912, which is a novel written like a pretend autobiography. It fascinated me. It’s the story of a black American who is trained as a classical pianist. All the books I’ve chosen start off with this fascination about children in music. You get this young child with a gift – and where does that gift come from? Is it genius? Is it an aptitude?
In this book, Johnson uses music as a way of talking about what it means to be black and what it means to be white. [The protagonist] is very light-skinned, so he moves between the black and the white worlds. At one point, he is a classical pianist and then he starts playing ragtime. He talks about how when you translate classical music into ragtime, are you talking more to your identity as a black person? There’s all this debate about music and whether the technique of one kind of music belongs to one culture or another. At one point he plays Mendelssohn’s Wedding March as a ragtime piece, which explodes so many ideas. He’s a linguist as well, so he talks about translation into different languages and how you have to do it emotionally and not technically. It’s fascinating: all this crossing of borders. And in the end, he goes into the white world and becomes a white person.
When people write about music, they are always writing about culture
It’s really interesting how music then gets mapped on to so many other debates, very graphically. It happens all the time when people write about music, but not in quite such a visual, obvious way. In this book, we go back in time to when there was actual segregation and he’s mapped music onto that. When people write about music, they are always writing about culture.
RF: So often when we write about music, we’re writing about so many other things…
KKM: And the metaphors people use are very telling.
RF: Metaphor is such a powerful tool for writing about music. It’s probably an impossible question to answer, but I wonder how much is reflective of the writer and how much reflects what the music is doing?
KKM: It has to be a balance between the two, doesn’t it? When you hear a piece of music, you’re bringing so much with you. It’s inextricable. Music is never neutral.
RF: Going back to the book we’ve just discussed, did the writing make you want to go and listen to the music?
KKM: It certainly made me want to listen to all of the classical pieces that he talked about: Beethoven, Mozart and Mendelssohn, lots of Romantic era music. It also made me want to listen to ragtime. There was a lot of talk about rhythm. The translation between classical and ragtime was all about the accents, rather than the rhythm of each bar. I really wanted to go and listen to what that actually means.
RF: Your mention of rhythm makes me wonder if, from your writer’s point of view, his prose reflected his musical material? As you were saying at the beginning, music is, indirectly, everywhere, and writing has a rhythm or a sense of music to it.
It’s a good question. It’s really difficult to say! I don’t know. One thing flows into another. That’s very interesting.
Especially when the children were little, whenever I was talking about phrasing and music, the only way they understood it was through poetry. Or I would say, this is like a sentence, and where is this sentence going? Or this is like a story, and where is the story building to?
RF: And your next book choice is the story of a child prodigy pianist. Can you tell me about why you’ve chosen it?
Alicia’s Gift by Jessica Duchen
KKM: Duchen uses synesthesia as the way into talking about the child’s relationship with music. I thought that was really powerful, because then you are directly translating music into something else.
She uses touch as well. I suppose it’s true of all instruments, but the piano is very tactile. Every single note has a touch. You have Alicia as a three-year-old sitting there and saying, D feels like deep red or E feels like royal blue. And then it’s not only a type of colour, she also uses taste as well. She talks about keys being lemon yellow or B flat being like chocolate. It’s more than translating music into colour, it’s also the sense of taste and the sense of touch. It’s a really clever way of bringing it to the reader.
She talks about keys being lemon yellow or B flat being like chocolate
RF: And of course Duchen is a pianist herself, so she is writing from that place of physical and emotional experience of the piano.
And she uses landscape a lot as well. A lot of the time the book is set in Yorkshire and Buxton, and the nature of the landscape becomes the music. That’s another dimension that has been used a lot in writing about music in general over the years. It’s drawing on that tradition. So when she talks about Ravel, she’s always talking about the course of water, waterfalls, and rain. Obviously, [in that case] this is what the composer is talking about in the music too, but I thought it was fascinating.
She also talks about the different relationships to music as you grow up as well. So when she’s playing a Beethoven piece, she puts her own complete child’s story on to it. Then when she’s older, there’s a completely different story.
RF: You mentioned earlier that all three books you’ve chosen have a connection to childhood – and, interestingly, they also all feature pianists. Your third choice is a book about Alice Herz-Sommer, who was born in Prague in 1903 and became a renowned pianist, before being deported to Theresienstadt.
A Garden of Eden in Hell: The Life of Alice Herz-Sommer by Melissa Müller and Reinhard Piechocki
KKM: This book is about music saving a life. Herz-Sommer talks in a foreword about how she always said, learn all the Chopin Etudes, it will save your life. She very deliberately learned all 24 of them, and they do save her life in the concentration camp.
The way that she talks about the Holocaust is through music. It’s as though music is the thread that kept her humanity alive and kept her attached to humanity. It’s an incredibly huge way of talking about music, and the tradition of European classical music. It’s as if you’re talking about something unspeakable through music, which becomes its own language. When she talks about music, it’s incredibly emotional. A lot of the time, what she says is actually quite sparing. But it’s all coming out through each Chopin Etude. It’s extraordinary.
Music is the thread that kept her humanity alive and kept her attached to humanity
RF: Music offers hope, which is a really necessary thing…
KKM: Yes, and then there is a thread from when she’s a child, and all that childhood and family is, which carries on through an unspeakable event. Music provides that link and language, that way of carrying on. Otherwise you’ve just got a complete breakdown. Music allows the story to carry on and make sense.
RF: You’ve chosen a fictionalised autobiography, a novel and an autobiography. I wonder if you think genre affects how people write about music?
KKM: That’s interesting. I’ve picked three things that trace a life, from childhood to adulthood, which wasn’t intentional. I suppose I picked writing that uses music as a way of storytelling and as cultural identity.
I think the style in which you write changes, but not really the themes you use, because there’s a limit to what you can do. You can talk about taste and colour, or nature, or language, and I don’t know what else. You have to be using these overarching linguistic themes. It’s only the style, I think, that changes.
RF: Thank you so much for your time and for speaking to me.
You can read more about the Kanneh-Mason family on their website.
I’d love to hear if you’ve read any of the books discussed – or indeed hear about any other great pieces of music writing that you’d like to share.
I’ll be back next month with an interview with the brilliant pianist Jeremy Denk, whose memoir Every Good Boy Does Fine: A Love Story, in Music Lessons, was published last autumn.
I love Alicia's Gift, it's a wonderful novel that deserves to be better known, a modern equivalent of Noel Streafield's fabulous Apple Bough (about a boy who becomes a concert pianist and how that affects his family who have to trail around after him, and the toll that the peripatetic life takes on him too) which I adored as a child. But I've never heard of the other two boks that Kadiatu cites, so thanks for pointing me towards them. I agree that her own book is as much a really good example of a personal memoir as it is an explanation of how her children came to be the remarkable musicians that they are. I loved the early bits about her childhood in South Wales too. But it also does a really good job of answering all the questions I had about the practicalities of managing lessons and practice time for seven musical children.
Love this conversation and new books to read. Thank you so much 🤗