‘Such and so great was the Affection he bare to Musick’: Hearing London's Eighteenth-century Black Community

In October 2017, the Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (PMC), Historic Royal Palaces (HRP), and Handel & Hendrix in London (HHL) co-hosted a scholarly workshop entitled Black Music: Its Circulation and Impact in Eighteenth-Century London. The program was produced in association with Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte, and the Shaping of the Modern World, an exhibition that had been co-organized by the Center and HRP, and which then was on display at Kensington Palace. Moderated by Michael Veal (Professor of African Music, African American Studies, and American Studies at Yale) and attended by scholars from around the world, the workshop opened with a series of concerts and performances held throughout HHL, which set the stage for a rich and productive exchange the following day at the PMC. Thanks to the generosity of Laura and James Duncan, Yale BA 1975, Friends of the Center who underwrote the original workshop, this program will be reconstituted for a New Haven audience on Thursday, April 25, at 5:30pm. The performance will be followed on Friday, April 26, by a daylong symposium Black Music: Its Circulation and Impact in Eighteenth-Century London, also at the Center.