The Concert | Abolitionism and the Arts

This concert featured Awet Andemicael (soprano) and Magdalena Stern Baczewska (piano) performing music related to abolitionism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Julia Hamilton-Louey introduced the songs' historical background and cultural relevance and Berta Joncus led the performers in a post-concert panel and Q&A with the audience. The video of this concert was filmed by Stuart Berczinski and edited by Abi Sinclair and Mariano Nuñez West.

Performers: Awet Andemicael (soprano) and Magdalena Stern Baczewska (piano)

Concert Program

Song Title: “The Negro’s Lamentation” (1800)
Composer(s): William Howard (d. 1834)

Song Title: “Forc’d from Home and all its Pleasures” (ca. 1797)
Composer(s): John Wall Callcott (1766–1821)

Song Title: “The Hapless Negro Boy” (ca. 1790)
Composer(s): Thomas Hamly Butler (ca. 1755–1823)

Song Title: “The Negro Girl” (ca. 1801)
Composer(s): William Carnaby (1772–1839)

Song Title: “The Negro’s Complaint. The Words by a Gentleman; inscribed to Granville Sharpe [sic] Esq. Music by a Female Correspondent—an Amateur,” in The Lady’s Magazine (1793)
Composer(s): Miss Greenwood (? – ?)

Song Title: “Am I Not a Man and Brother?” to the tune of Thomas Williams’s “The Bride’s Farewell,” in W.W. Brown’s The Anti-Slavery Harp: A Collection of Songs for Anti-Slavery Meetings (ca. 1848)
Composer(s): Anonymous, selected by William Wells Brown (ca. 1814–1884)

Song Title: Cotillions &c. (1776) “The Runaway” “The Feathers” “Minuet” “Vive le Roy” “Shandy Hall” “Tant mieux”
Composer(s): Ignatius Sancho (ca. 1729-1780)

Song Title: Twelve Country Dances (1779) “Lord Dalkeiths Reel” “All of one Mind” “Mungo’s Delight”
Composer(s): Ignatius Sancho (ca. 1729-1780)

Song Title: Selected Spirituals: “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” “Go Down, Moses” “Steal Away” “De Gospel Train” “Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho”
Composer(s): By enslaved Black musicians of the C19, Arranged by Harry T. Burleigh (1866–1949)