‘My son was cut out of BBC's Harry and Meghan wedding highlights because he is black'
Sheku Kanneh-Mason was chosen to perform at the 2018 ceremony, held at St George's Chapel, Windsor.
His mother, Kadiatu, said she was dismayed to see that he was cut from the BBC highlights coverage, and was not featured in newspapers the next day.
She suggested that the media did not know how to deal with a black cellist, as classical music was normally the preserve of white musicians.
Speaking at the Hay Festival, in Wales, Mrs Kanneh-Mason said: 'When Sheku played at the royal wedding, that night he was not in any of the BBC highlights. So there was the choir, there was the preacher but he was left out as though he hadn't been there.
'The next morning, we looked through all the papers. He was not there. So they decided that he was going to be absent. And we thought, what's going on here?
'I think what it was: the gospel choir was doing what it was supposed to do. The preacher was doing what he was supposed to do. But a black cellist? A black cellist cancels itself out … he's not doing what he's supposed to be doing, he's not doing a black thing. That's really interesting, unpacking what the media thinks we're supposed to do.'
Sheku, the first black winner of the BBC Young Musician competition, was chosen to perform at the wedding after the Duke saw him play at a charity event. He played three pieces of music at the ceremony.
The wedding also featured gospel singers The Kingdom Choir, who performed Stand By Me, and American preacher Rt Rev Michael Curry, who was the first black presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church.
His sermon, which centred on the redemptive power of love, was well-received and drew significant attention.
The London-based choir, which features 30 singers and was formed in 1994, found fame after the wedding. They were regularly asked to perform and signed a record deal with Sony Music UK.
Mrs Kanneh-Mason has written a book, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, about Sheku and his six musically gifted siblings, exploring 'issues of cultural, racial and national identity'.
She said of Sheku entering the BBC Young Musician competition: 'I panicked because he had a massive afro at that point and I thought, 'If he goes on the stage with that… the judges are not going to believe he's a classical musician. Should we make him a bit more formal?'
'In the end, he went on as himself but we had to think about that: what the presentation was, what the image was. It's one of those things going on all the time.'
Mrs Kanneh-Mason said that her daughter, Konya, a pianist, was racially abused by an audience member while a student at the Royal Academy of Music.
She said a man came up to her daughter and said 'I think you played beautifully – I don't know, because I was looking at your body all the time.
'Then he said, 'You shouldn't be here, because you people are taking all the jobs from the white musicians who should be here'. And she looked around and thought, 'I am the only black musician, the only black person in this room, so whose job am I taking?''
Asked about her children suffering 'micro-aggressions', Mrs Kanneh-Mason said: 'They're called micro-aggressions but actually they're maxi-aggressions. They happen all the time. And having to navigate that on a daily basis is very difficult.'
A BBC spokesman said: 'BBC News reported widely on Sheku Kanneh-Mason's role in the 2018 royal wedding including news that he was selected to play, multiple stories of how the day unfolded and on the impact of his performance.'
Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Boston Globe
32 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Joan Anderson, unsung heroine of hula hoop history, dies at 101
'Everyone was having such fun,' she added, 'I thought, 'I'd like to do that, too.'' Back in Los Angeles, Ms. Anderson asked her mother to mail her one of the rings from Australia, and it soon brought joy to the Anderson household. Her children played with it. Ms. Anderson swerved it around her hips for friends at dinner parties. When someone told her that it looked as if she was 'doing the hula,' the traditional Hawaiian dance, Ms. Anderson was struck with inspiration. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up She named the object the hula hoop. Advertisement What transpired next would place Ms. Anderson at the center of what she described as an American tale of shattered dreams and promises, a business deal made on a handshake, and, eventually, a lawsuit. Ms. Anderson died July 14 at a nursing facility in Carlsbad, Calif., north of San Diego. She was 101. Her daughter, Loralyn Willis, announced the death. The hubbub over the hoop started when her husband, Wayne, saw opportunity in the object and decided to pitch it to Wham-O, a toy company that soon became known for the Frisbee. As it happened, he was acquainted with one of Wham-O's founders, Arthur Melin, known as Spud, so he arranged a meeting. Advertisement The encounter, she recalled, occurred in a parking lot outside Wham-O's offices in San Gabriel, Calif. The Andersons opened up the trunk of their car and took out the hoop. 'There were no witnesses,' Ms. Anderson said in the documentary. 'Just Spud and my husband and myself.' 'We told him, 'We've called it the hula hoop,'' she continued. 'He said: 'Looks like it has some merit. If it makes money for us, it's going to make money for you.'' The deal was sealed with what Ms. Anderson characterized as a 'gentleman's handshake' and nothing more. Wham-O began experimenting with the hoop, developing a plastic version of it and trying it out on children at a Pasadena, Calif., elementary school. The company also started giving them away to generate buzz. By the time Wham-O was selling the hoop, lines were forming outside department stores. As the popularity of what Wham-O trademarked as the Hula Hoop grew, Ms. Anderson said, she and her husband heard less and less from Melin. 'We called Spud and asked him what was going on, and he kept putting us off,' she said. 'Then they just ignored us.' The hoop quickly became a national sensation. From Ms. Anderson's home in the suburbs of Monterey Park, Calif., she watched as newspapers landed on her porch with headlines like 'Hula-Hoop Sales Soar to $30 Million in 2 Months.' Over the years, stories about Wham-O's success sometimes spoke of a 'friend' visiting from Australia who first told the company about the hoop. 'I think that bugged me more than anything,' Ms. Anderson said. 'It was never reported correctly at all. I was not a 'friend.'' Advertisement In 1961, the Andersons filed a lawsuit against Wham-O. But the company presented records demonstrating its own woes. Just as quickly as the Hula Hoop sensation took off, it swiftly ended, entering the annals of American fads. Wham-O was left with heaps of unsold hoops and argued that it had not made a profit after production costs. The case concluded in a settlement, and the Andersons walked away with just a few thousand dollars. The couple moved on with their lives. Wham-O went on to release the SuperBall, the Slip 'N Slide ,and Silly String. Melin died in 2002. (Wham-O was sold in 1982 to the Kransco Group Cos. for $12 million. It was later sold to Mattel, which then sold it to a group of investors, and it has continued changing hands ever since.) 'We often talked about the money we could have made from it and maybe changed our life a little bit,' Ms. Anderson said in the documentary, 'but it didn't work out that way.' 'The world isn't fair. But life goes on.' Joan Constance Manning was born Dec. 28, 1923, in Sydney to Claude and Ethel (Hallandal) Manning. Her father was a real estate broker. As a young woman, Joan was a swimsuit model known as the 'Pocket Venus' because she was 5 feet 2 inches tall. In 1945, Wayne Anderson, a US Army pilot on leave from duty, approached Joan on Bondi Beach. They married a few months later and moved to California. Anderson, who went on to run a prosperous woodwork machine manufacturing business, died in 2007. Advertisement In addition to her daughter, Loralyn, Ms. Anderson is survived by two sons, Warren and Gary, and six grandchildren. Another son, Carl, died in 2023. Over the years, Ms. Anderson's brush with hula hoop history faded into family lore. When her children grew up, they sent letters about her story to Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres, but nothing came of it. Fate intervened in 2016, when Ms. Anderson's daughter was recounting the story to coworkers while dining at a restaurant in La Mesa, near San Diego. At a table nearby, eavesdropping, was the mother of Amy Hill, a filmmaker. She asked for her telephone number and passed it along it to Hill. Intrigued by the tip, Hill began vetting the story with her husband and collaborator, Chris Riess. They decided to pursue the project and interviewed Ms. Anderson at La Costa Glen, the retirement community where she lived. The resulting short documentary, 'Hula Girl,' premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2018. At 94, Ms. Anderson flew to New York to promote the film, and a writer for Vogue interviewed her for an article. The documentary was also shown at the Sydney Film Festival and received coverage in The Atlantic and Smithsonian magazine. It was screened as well for Ms. Anderson's fellow residents at La Costa Glen. Her friends watched in fascination as they learned about her connection to the hula hoop. At La Costa Glen, Ms. Anderson stayed fit by swimming every week and taking ballroom dancing lessons. She also became a formidable bridge player. And in her apartment, she kept the original wood hoop that her mother had mailed to her from Australia, although it mostly sat collecting dust. Advertisement 'I do it once in a while for exercise,' she said, 'but not as much as I should.' This article originally appeared in
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
After ‘Eddington:' 7 Offbeat Westerns to Watch Next
We've got some movies that'll scratch that itch Ari Aster's 'Eddington' is here. The movie, which pits a small-town sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix) against his mayor (Pedro Pascal), set during the early days of the global pandemic, is fierce and raw. Considering this is from Aster, the director of 'Midsommar,' 'Hereditary' and 'Beau is Afraid,' it is also confrontational and strange and deeply funny, with the action set at the precipice of the complete breakdown in communication that accompanied lockdown. (Indiewire called it 'the first truly modern American Western.') More from TheWrap After 'Eddington:' 7 Offbeat Westerns to Watch Next 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps' Post-Credits Scenes Explained: Who Was That? Jamie Lee Curtis Watched Her Parents' Success 'Slowly Erode' as They Aged: 'That's Very Painful' 'Coyote vs Acme' Takes Digs at Warner Bros., 2026 Release Date Announced And if you come out of 'Eddington' looking for more offbeat westerns to watch, we've got seven that should fill that void nicely. 'Bad Company' (1972) In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a slew of what were referred to as 'acid westerns' – westerns that were set in the distant past but that embraced the counterculture of the period, including, of course, recreational drug use. (Hence the 'acid' in 'acid western.') These parallels are made explicitly clear in 'Bad Company,' which is one of the very best movies from that era and one of the more underrated. The movie stars Jeff Bridges and Barry Brown (who tragically took his own life before the decade was up) as two young men who dodge the draft during the American Civil War. The movie has an episodic structure, with the pair getting into misadventures along the way, gorgeously shot by legendary cinematographer Gordon Willis, as their wayward drifting transitions to out-and-out lawlessness. If you've seen it and are a fan of it or want to check it out now for the first time, Fun City Editions put out a terrific Blu-ray edition recently that is very much worth checking out. 'Walker' (1987) After making 'Repo Man' and 'Sid & Nancy,' British director Alex Cox turned his sights on a one-of-a-kind western. The movie stars Ed Harris as William Walker, an American physician, lawyer and mercenary who organized military expeditions into Mexico and at one point made himself president of Nicaragua. Like 'Eddington,' 'Walker' leans into the events of recent (and current) history – it was actually filmed in Nicaragua during the Contra War, a conflict that would have major implications for American politics. (Just Google Iran-Contra.) What makes 'Walker' really bonkers is Cox's use of historical anachronisms – there will be a Zippo lighter or a Coke can in scenes, and, if you don't know this going in, it can make you feel like you're going insane. Incredibly, Universal Pictures released the movie, selling it as a more straightforward western (in the trailer you here but never see a helicopter) and it promptly tanked. Since then, it has caught a second wind, and Criterion put out a killer Blu-ray that is very much worth your time. 'Unforgiven' (1992) Aster has openly stated that he was influenced by 'Unforgiven' in making 'Eddington,' and it's both easy and somewhat difficult to see. There is a meandering quality to the story in both 'Unforgiven' and 'Eddington,' and we mean that in a positive. If it's been a while since you've seen the Best Picture-winning Clint Eastwood film, there's a whole section of the movie where the wronged prostitutes hire an assassin named English Bob (Richard Harris), who totally punks out and leaves them high and dry, before they even find Eastwood's 'Will' Munny. There are so many narrative left turns and surprises, which translate to 'Eddington' (we don't want to give anything away), even if 'Unforgiven' is a much more traditional Western in tone and look. But hey, if you were looking for an excuse to rewatch 'Unforgiven,' consider 'Eddington' the reason. 'Lone Star' (1996) John Sayles' masterpiece, set in modern times and starring Chris Cooper as a sheriff who investigates the murder of one of his predecessors (Kris Kristofferson) years earlier, investigates time and how the past impacts the present. (These are things very much in 'Eddington.') What was striking about 'Lone Star' at the time – and what's still striking now – is how much iconography and narrative convention from a classic western could be grafted to something that would be considered a 'contemporary' film. These are themes and characters and even shot compositions that would not be out of place in a classic western, but dealing with modern concerns and moral ambiguity. (We don't want to ruin anything if you've never seen 'Lone Star.') Just watch it; it has a handful of award-worthy performances and a script by Sayles that was nominated for the Oscar for original screenplay. It also has a must-own 4K from Criterion. 'The Proposition' (2005) 'The Proposition' is bleak, even bleaker than 'Eddington' and with fewer jokes. But they do share a connective tissue in their desire to showcase a particular moment in time and the people who inhabit that moment. In 'Eddington,' it's 2020, and the breakdown of law and order around the pandemic is evident. In 'The Proposition' it's the 1880's, when criminals populated the Australian bush (like famous outlaw Ned Kelly) and English were brutally exterminating Australian Aboriginals. Like we said – bleak. Chances are you've never seen this one, which marked the breakthrough film of Australian director John Hillcoat, working from a screenplay by Australian musician Nick Cave, so we'll spare the details. We'll just say that Guy Pearce and Ray Winstone enter into a truly screwed up agreement that has dire consequences. Just watch it. It's worth it. Even if you have to close your eyes occasionally. 'The Counselor' (2013) Both more straightforward and more bonkers, Ridley Scott's underrated masterpiece 'The Counselor' is the perfect chaser to 'Eddington.' Like 'Eddington,' it is set in modern times, with deeply conflicted characters occasionally bumping up against and colliding with one another. In the only original screenplay written by the great Cormac McCarthy, Michael Fassbender plays a lawyer who gets in deep with some underworld types and attempts to save himself and his new wife (Penelope Cruz) from damnation. It's heady, for sure, but also extremely pulpy, with some of the best dialogue this side of the Rio Grande. (Most of it is too filthy to directly quote here.) Javier Bardem, Cameron Diaz and Brad Pitt all offer up superb supporting performances. And if you really want to feel the full power of 'The Counselor,' which we would put in the top 5 Ridley movies, watch the extended version. It gives everything more time to luxuriate. We are desperate for a longer 'Eddington', too, for that matter. 'Hell or High Water' (2016) What a movie – aesthetically 'Hell or High Water' is probably closest to 'Eddington' in its attempt to replicate the feeling of the old west in contemporary context. The movie, which people forget was nominated for four Academy Awards (including Best Picture), follows Chris Pine and Ben Foster, who are robbing banks to save their family ranch. Jeff Bridges is the Texas Ranger on their tail. They both tackle current-day social issues (the pandemic vs. the country's abysmal economic condition) but do it in an incredibly entertaining way, with Scottish director David Mackenzie upping the tension and Nick Cave and Warren Ellis delivering a beautiful, elegiac score (they also scored 'The Proposition,' see above). While 'Hell or High Water' might be more outwardly entertaining, it is still very much of a piece with 'Eddington.' Again: with fewer jokes and conspiracies. The post After 'Eddington:' 7 Offbeat Westerns to Watch Next appeared first on TheWrap.
Buzz Feed
9 hours ago
- Buzz Feed
Mario And Peach Are Just Friends
Since the '80s, our favorite mustachioed plumber, Mario, rescued our blonde-haired princess, Peach, from that problematic turtle monster, Bowser. But if you thought they were madly in love and destined to be together forever, think again. Newsflash: Mario and Princess Peach are apparently just friends! No, you didn't read that wrong. After decades of romantic rumors, Nintendo basically revealed the actual status of Mario and Peach's relationship. "Princess Peach and Mario are good friends," the Japanese video game company wrote in a statement this past week, "and help each other out whenever they can." The news was brought to everyone's attention by X user @KirPinkFury, who discovered this bombshell announcement via the Nintendo Today app and shared it to X on July 23. For decades, across multiple platforms and forms of media, Mario has rescued the kidnapped Princess Peach from Bowser, and sometimes he was even rewarded with a kiss. But this viral revelation changes everything we once knew about the Mushroom Kingdom's greatest hero. If this news rocked your world, here's how people online reacted: If you've played Super Mario Odyssey, then you'll remember when Peach rejected him after he traveled across the galaxy to rescue her. People couldn't get over the idea that he was seemingly "friendzoned" after all these years: Some folks were downright shocked and saddended by the news: And finally, somebody joked that maybe his archnemesis Bowser was in charge of the company: Funny enough, technically Doug Bowser is the current president and CEO of Nintendo of America, the American branch of the Japanese company. So, yes. Bowser is the CEO. It'll be okay, everyone. We need an update on Princess Daisy and Luigi's relationship status. We contacted Nintendo for comment and'll let you know if we hear back.
