'Slave song'
A project reflecting on the significance of the ‘African song or chant’ from Barbados (reference D3549/13/3/27)
Find out more….
A rare, internationally significant manuscript held in Gloucestershire Archives formed the basis for a project funded by Arts Council England. The 18th century song is the world’s oldest surviving notated music from Barbados and unusually captures the voices of enslaved people working in the sugar plantations.
Rider Shafique (Gloucester musician and artist of Bajan descent) and Vanley Burke (the ‘Godfather of Black British Photography’) created an installation in the Lady Chapel at Gloucester Cathedral in September 2024 which explored the impact of the transatlantic slave trade from their viewpoint as descendants of Caribbean enslaved people. The project also involved the Sew Jamaica sewing group who stitched clothes into the textile element of the installation, an immersive audio-visual installation by local film-maker Callum Chaplin and a series of talks arranged in partnership with the University of Gloucestershire.
The project was delivered in partnership with Voices Gloucester led by project curators Jacqui Grange and Georgia Williams.
'Beating Back the Past' exhibition at Gloucester Cathedral 2024
Further information
The survival of the ‘African song or chant from Barbados’ is remarkable as it was heard by William Dickson, Secretary to the Governor of Barbados, then notated by his friend the prominent abolitionist, Granville Sharp, who was also a good musician and record keeper. His papers later formed part of the Lloyd-Baker family archives which were transferred to Gloucestershire Archives for safekeeping in the 1970s. We are delighted to promote this important archive to wider audiences across the world.
Further afield
The song manuscript also featured in major exhibitions exploring the impact of slavery at the Wellcome Collection, 2024-2025 and at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge in 2025.
On 3 February 2025 the song was celebrated on the front page of Wikipedia: The African song of chant from Barbados was originally sung by enslaved West Africans in sugar-cane plantations in Barbados. It was found by Roger Gibbs who nominated it in an online exhibition [curated by Gloucestershire Archives]. The song subsequently inspired the exhibition at Gloucester Cathedral: ‘Beating Back the Past’ was an immersive exhibition at Gloucester Cathedral in September 2024, featuring sound, installation and textiles. It considered the enslavement of African people, exploring themes of torture, inherited trauma and the ongoing legacy of chattel slavery. Artists Vanley Burke and Rider Shafique were inspired by a Bajan 18th century 'Slave Song', a manuscript on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register held in Gloucestershire Archives. The 'Slave Song' was the earliest Bajan musical manuscript capturing the voices of the enslaved. The artists used a range of creative processes to represent this archival material through the lens of descendants of the enslaved.
