LES ROUTES DE L’ESCLAVAGE
1444-1888

Hespèrion XXI, Jordi Savall, La Capella Reial de Catalunya

32,99€

We firmly believe that the advantage of being aware of the past enables us to be more responsible and therefore morally obliges us to take a stand against these inhuman practices. The music in this programme represents the true living history of that long and painful past. Let us listen to the emotion and hope expressed in these songs of survival and resistance, this music of the memory of a long history of unmitigated suffering, in which music became a mainspring of survival and, fortunately for us all, has survived as an eternal refuge of peace, consolation and hope.

Slavery remembered
1444 – 1888

Humanity is divided into two: masters and slaves.

Aristotle (385-322 B. C), Politics

Homo homini lupus est.

Plautus (c. 195 B. C) Asinaria

Man is a wolf to his fellow man.

Thomas Hobbes (1651), De Cive

Despite the fact that for more than four centuries, from 1444 (the year of the first mass slaving expedition, described in a text from the period) to 1888 (the year slavery was abolished in Brazil), over 25 million Africans were shipped by European countries to be bound in slavery, this period of history – one of the most painful and shameful in the history of mankind – is still largely unknown by the general public. The women, men and children who were brutally deported from their villages in Africa to the European colonies in the New World had only their culture of origin to accompany them on the journey: religious beliefs, traditional medicine, dietary customs, and music – songs and dances that they kept alive in their new destinations, known as habitations or plantations. We shall try to evoke those shameful moments in the history of humanity through a series of eloquent texts and accounts, accompanied by the emotion and vitality of the music to which the slaves sang and danced.

+ information in the CD booklet

JORDI SAVALL

Sarajevo/Bellaterra

21/23 October, 2016

Translated by Jacqueline Minett

Slavery remembered 1444 – 1888

Critics

Slavery remembered
1444 – 1888