For this month’s Music Book Review I thought I would take a slightly different direction to the books I normally review. This month my Music Book is one for you to read rather than for your children to read. It is the autobiography of the mother of the amazing Kanneh-Mason family, House of Music: Raising the Kanneh-Masons by Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason. The blurb for this book says:
‘I was entranced… Beautifully written and hugely enjoyable.’ Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, Other
Seven brothers and sisters. All of them classically trained musicians. One was Young Musician of the Year and performed for the royal family. The eldest has released her first album, showcasing the works of Clara Schumann. These siblings don’t come from the rarefied environment of elite music schools, but from a state comprehensive in Nottingham. How did they do it?
Their mother, Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason, opens up about what it takes to raise a musical family in a Britain divided by class and race. What comes out is a beautiful and heartrending memoir of the power of determination, camaraderie and a lot of hard work. The Kanneh-Masons are a remarkable family. But what truly sparkles in this eloquent memoir is the joyous affirmation that children are a gift and we must do all we can to nurture them.”
What is the book about?
This book is Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason’s autobiography. It tells her story from growing up between 2 worlds – Sierra Leone, where her beloved father was from; and the UK where her mother was from and also where her parents met each other. Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason paints a very vivid picture of what life was like for her growing up in the contrasts of her 2 worlds, with influences of both of her loving families, the different musical traditions in both worlds, losing her beloved father, and her and her siblings’ experiences with racism in the UK in the 1970s and 80s. This is a very whistle stop tour of the first part of her book and barely skims the surface of what the author talks about in this first part of the book.
She tells us the story of meeting and falling in love with her Stuart at Southampton University, of their marrying and struggling through the early years of balancing the demands of family life and their early careers until the time that Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason decided to give up work and stay at home with her growing family aft6er realising that she had been trying to do too much. Right from the start the Kanneh-Masons were a very driven, motivated, hard-working family.
If you are at all interested in reading this book, you probably know a little bit about the Kanneh-Mason family. You may already know that they are a family of 9 – parents Kadiatu and Stuart, and their 7 children all of whom are extremely talented professional musicians. And not just professional musicians, these children are all classical music soloists. I first became aware of the family when Sheku Kanneh-Mason, their third child, won BBC Young Musician of the Year in 2016, and their fame as a family has grown as all of their children have performed both on television, and in concert halls all around the world including Sheku performing at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
The book tells you of the sacrifices that had to be made by everyone in the family, both financial, physical and emotional on the part of every member of the family. It tells you the highs and lows of being a family who is very much involved in the classical music industry. It also tells you what it is like to be a Black family in this world, and how it feels to be within that world and to be different to everyone else. The book ends after a period when all of the children, plus a University friend of one of the children’s, have returned home during the pandemic and how that experience affected them.
Commentary on the book
For this month, rather that breaking the rest of the review down into what I like and what I don’t like about the book, what I wanted to do was to give some commentary on it instead.
This is a book about an extraordinary family. All 7 of the children are incredible musicians. To have 1 professional musician in a family is rather unusual these days, even more so for that professional musician to be a soloist. It is relatively rare for people to earn a living as a soloist, and professional musicians are much more likely to become a performer in an orchestra, or choir, or opera and sometimes perform as a soloist. Many professional musicians are also music teachers as well as their performing work. And even fewer start to gain their fame as a classical soloist in their childhood or teenage years.
This is a very driven, hard working family. And the tales of sacrifice in this book – on the part of everyone, not just the children and not just the parents – reminded me of documentaries and films I have seen about elite athletes or academics or chess prodigies. People who have, at a very young age, spent all of their time, almost all of their effort on, say, becoming an olympic athlete, or attending university at a young age.
I quite like that the book highlights the hours and hours of practice, and the sheer hard work that it takes to be able to perform at the level that these children and young people perform at. With the creative arts, we talk so much about how talented artists are as if they are born with talent and wake up one day able to perform effortlessly just like that. In fact, like with elite sports, becoming a musician at this level requires a lot of work. Work in terms of learning the music and understanding it; work in terms of the physical skills and stamina required to play a music al instrument at this level; work in terms of developing the mental stamina to travel the world to perform – to conquer nerves and have the ability to stand or sit on stage and perform for an audience. This all takes commitment and a lot of work, and all of this extraordinary family put that work in.
This family clearly all love each other very much and are proud of each other. They work together, support each other, and even through teenage years seem to spend a lot of time with each other and continue to offer each other support. There was quite a bit of Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason’s experience as a mother – how overwhelming it can be, how the washing never, ever ends – that felt very familiar. The worry about whether how you are bringing your children up is the right thing, the worry about how your children are no matter how old they are and what stage of life they are at. The book was peppered with tales of the family coming together for holidays and meals at home sat around the table together, and I enjoyed the fact that while they are an extraordinary family, they are also a very ordinary family in many ways.
In writing this review I have described this family as extraordinary a number of times, and that is for a specific reason. Not only are they all very talented, hard working, committed and brilliant musicians, who all attained their grade 8 on their chosen instruments at a very young age, but they are all soloists. And they have all become famous as classical musicians at a very young age.
I mentioned above that it is more likely that a professional musician will be a music teacher, or a player in an orchestra. And there are a lot of career paths open to people who do music degrees (this is from experience as someone who worked hard enough to do a music degree but who did not follow a career as a performer). What I am saying is that in order to attain any proficiency as a musician that does, absolutely, take hard work and many hours of practice. But just because your child is not taking their grade 8 by the time they are 10, or headed towards competing in the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition, does not mean either that they will not be a musician if that is what they want to do. They may take longer to become a soloist. They may prefer working as part of an ensemble. They may love teaching a new generation of musicians. They may love music enough to work in another part of the music or arts industry as I did after University. They may not do music at all beyond school but have a love of listening to and playing music. All of these are very valid paths for our youngsters to take. So please don’t read this book and think to yourself “my child is 10 and they have only just started playing a musical instrument, they may as well give up now”. Instead read it for what it is, a portrait of an extraordinary musical family.
Would I recommend this book?
Honestly, the answer for me is both yes and no. I felt it was a rather long book, at 368 pages, and for me the book could have been much shorter. The author’s writing style was to follow a themed approach to telling hers and her family’s story. The themes being the chapter headings “In their Beginning”, “Nature and Nurture”, “The Importance of Failure” or “Mind and Body” for example. But I felt that this gave the book a bit of a repetitive quality, and I found that it jumped around a little too much for my personal liking in terms of the timeline of the children’s lives, or the family’s lives, and I found it harder to follow than I would have liked. But then, I am not a person who likes to read biography. So I am not really the intended audience.
The book is very much the mother’s story. It is the story of her life, her sacrifices and the work she has put in and her view of the work and sacrifices that her children have put in and made to get to the point they are in in their lives now. If you are going to pick this book up expecting it to be almost entirely about the children and life from their perspective, or if you are expecting a sort of instruction manual on how to get your children to become brilliant classical musicians, then this is not the book for you. But if you want to see reflections on motherhood as well as commentary on this family’s life, then this may be perfect for you.
This is a family that fascinates me, and so I am very glad that I read the book and know a little more about them. I have at least one of their CDs at home, and have got my children to listen to the family playing, and shown them videos of them playing to try as they are young people who are passionate about music. I do think that they are inspirational for young musicians, and not just because of their age. They come across as down to earth, family oriented, and ordinary people (despite how extraordinary they are), and I love that young musicians can see an example of classical musicians who are, for want of a better word, cool. Who are the sorts of people that I would want to be if I were young and back at the age of contemplating whether I want to bother putting in the practice I needed to to progress with my instrumental playing.
So, I would say a cautious yes to recommending the book. If you enjoy reading biographies, and if you are interested in the life of this family, and specifically the life of Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason, then I would recommend the book to you. I would give the book maybe 3 out of 5.
I read the book on my kindle, and at the time of writing this review the kindle version of the book is priced at £6.99 on Amazon, and the price of the paperback is currently £8.97 or £6.99 there as well. You will also be able to find the book at many other book retailers.
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