When sisters Charlotte and Katie Manye found out they were going to England in 1891, they were overjoyed — “leaping and whirling … in a dance of triumph” Katie Manye said of their journey.
“To England!” she recounts Charlotte shouting again, locking her arms in Katie’s as they both “leapt upwards on one last burst of energy before falling exhausted to the floor.”
Charlotte and Katie Manye were singers in a South African choir that traveled to England, Scotland and Ireland for a series of concerts between 1891 and 1893. The sisters’ reaction to the news and some of the details of the trip are documented in The Calling of Katie Makanya, book drawn from a series of interviews Katie recorded later in life and compiled by Margaret McCord in 1995 — the daughter of a doctor with whom Katie worked for many years.
The story is receiving renewed attention because of a new dance performance touring Europe and North America this year called Broken Chord that imagines the choir’s journey.
The trip’s purpose was to raise money to build a technical college in South Africa, according to the 1891 program notes. The trip enchanted at least some audiences, but the choir also encountered the racism and paternalism of Victorian Britain.
Charlotte, age 20 in 1891 and working as a school teacher, and Katie, age 17, lived in Kimberley, famous for its diamond mines and the second largest town in South Africa, then a colony of Britain.
The Manye sisters were in a church choir that also sang at garden parties held by the town’s white people. How the tour abroad came about is unclear. Katie said that a Mr. Howells from England came up with the idea of a tour under the supervision of English managers. Professor Veit Erlmann, a German musicologist who has written extensively about the choir, suggests that the idea came from missionaries and maybe some of the choir members themselves.
The South African choir comprised seven women and seven men: young, educated people, devout…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply