Episode 3

Over the past three decades, Goldie has helped pioneer a crossover that has reshaped British music, one between classical composition and the popular music of Black Britain. In this series, he traces how it happened and finds the traffic running in both directions. Artists who came up immersed in drum and bass, garage and grime have moved from borrowing classical textures to writing symphonies of their own, while classically trained composers have brought the rhythms of the street into the concert hall.

Each episode covers a distinct stage: the first reach for the orchestra, the crossing over that followed, and the musical fusions made by a current generation for whom there is no longer a line to cross.

A composer drawing on the music of the street is nothing new. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor built whole works out of spirituals in 1905, doing for his own people’s music what Brahms had done with Hungarian folk tunes. What is new is the vernacular being drawn on and who is doing it.
No one is better placed to tell this story than Goldie. As he has said, the point has always been to put the power of culture into people's hands. The ambition to give drum and bass the mood and depth of classical music took hold early on and shaped his 1995 album Timeless; by the follow-up, Saturnz Return, Goldie had a full string section playing on the record. He learned to conduct in 2008 for the BBC's Maestro, and a year later his first orchestral composition, Sine Tempore, was premiered at the Proms by the BBC Concert Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Choir. This autumn, Goldie returns to the South Bank with his live band and an orchestra.

EPISODE 3: NEW FUSIONS
The boundary dissolves with artists for whom classical music and the popular music of Black Britain are not two languages but one. Hannah Kendall grew up with a violin in her hands and grime on the pirate stations and worked both into a piece for the Proms. Daniel Kidane takes the Manchester carnival into the Albert Hall. Cassie Kinoshi writes a jazz band, orchestral players and a turntablist into a single score. The cellist Ayanna Witter-Johnson sings and plays at the same time on her popular music and classical compositions, a habit that began with writing lyrics to a Debussy sonata. Goldie finally hears Timeless played by a real orchestra, and Little Simz conducts Chineke! at her own Meltdown festival. The series ends with a grime opera, recorded by Leicestershire schoolchildren in their bedrooms during lockdown.

Music featured in this episode: Carl Orff, O Fortuna, conducted by Goldie; Hannah Kendall, The Spark Catchers; Daniel Kidane, Revel; Cassie Kinoshi, Sun Through My Window from her suite gratitude; Ayanna Witter-Johnson, Rise Up! and Earth; Debussy, Cello Sonata; Goldie, Inner City Life with the Heritage Orchestra; Little Simz, Wings, from the 1Xtra Grime Prom; Steve Reich, Music for a Large Ensemble; and Here and Now, from Grown: A Grime Opera.