Commissioned by National Youth Arts Wales for the National Youth Brass Band of Wales.
As I was preparing to start work on this piece in early June 2020, the world was being rocked by Black Lives Matter protests, sparked by the tragic death of George Floyd in Minneapolis at the hands of the police, but then spreading worldwide. I studied at Bristol University in the early 1990s, and have been a regular visitor to the city since leaving there in 1997. So I watched with some amazement on 7 June as news reports came through of Colston’s statue being torn down and dumped in the harbour.
Edward Colston (1636-1721) was strongly involved in the slave trade in Bristol, and used some of his slave-created wealth to benefit the city. His name has lived on in Bristol’s Colston Hall – though the Hall is soon to announce a new name – and in various other institutions. There have been campaigns seeking the removal of his statue, but where these did not succeed, a crowd of protesters with ropes did. The statue was pulled down to cheers. A protestor knelt on its neck in a symbolic gesture echoing the killing of George Floyd. The statue was then rolled down the road to the Floating Harbour, where it was unceremoniously thrown in. Such symbolism, for the statue of a slave-owner to end up in the very waters where the wealth created by those slaves arrived in Britain.
The statue remained in the river until 11 June, when it was recovered by Bristol City Council and put into storage. It has since been on display at the M Shed on Bristol’s harbourside.
Colston Falls is a musical reaction to this event. It opens with a surging crowd, and percussion beating out the date of the protest in Morse code. The crowd roars, a chant of “Bring it down, bring it down” is heard through the cacophony. There’s wild, unbridled, fear-tinged jubilation and frenzy as the statue itself is toppled, then a new grating, halting rhythm starts up, led by percussion, as the statue is half-dragged, half-rolled along the road. This reaches its culmination as the statue reaches the harbourside and is cast into the water. Bells peal out, in the Bristol Surprise Major change-ringing method.
And then, calm. Out of this calm an 18th-century Welsh ballad tune, ‘Gwêl yr Adeilad’ (‘See the Building’), is heard, initially on flugelhorn and then building up to full band. This was the tune to which an early anti-slavery ballad in Welsh was intended to be sung – the verses were written in the early 1790s by Edward Barnes, a Methodist from Wrexham. Thanks to Professor E. Wyn James of Cardiff University for his research (‘Welsh Ballads and American Slavery’, 2007), which led me to this tune, and with his kind help in sending me Barnes’ verses:
Pob Cymro a synio sy union, sef gwneuthur i bob dynion, yr un daioni;
Neu ’r lles, a iawn ’wyllysien’, gan eraill gael eu hunain yn ’r un goleuni,
’Mhob bron, mae’r gyfraith hirfaith hon, yn rheol eglur, ’n ol goleu nattur;
Heblaw ’r yscrythyr, yn pwyntio’r llwybr llon,
I’w droedio rhag tro hudol a phwys ceryddol ffon.
A wnei di, sy’n adrodd wrthym ni, na ladd neb allan, droi i ladd dy hunan,
Gan wneud cam llwyrlan i frawd o druan fri,
Fel brad y dynion duon echryslon greulon gri?
Darllenwch yr holl hanes, cewch weled gwaedlyd lechres a bair ddychryn,
Ym mhob cydwybod effro, a fytho heb ei serio â haiarn twymyn;
Pwy yn awr, a fedd na gwedd na gwawr, o ddynol deimlad,
At gyd-greaduriaid, tan fath gaethiwed, na chlyw resyned sawr
Sy’n codi oddiwrth eu triniad, â’r fath ammharchiad mawr?
Trwy nerth, Duw gwyn fydd oreu gwerth, ymrown o ddifri, i ymddidoli,
Oddi wrth gefnogi, hyn sy’n ddrygioni sêrth,
Gadawn eu Rum a’u Siwgwr, sy[’]n peri’r cynnwr certh.
I’m grateful to Professor James for providing me with a summary of the contents of these verses in English. The first verse “reminds Welsh people of the clear rule of the Bible and of natural morality that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us, including our poor black brethren, who are in such a wretched state and are being treated so very cruelly.”
The second verse “says that, unless someone’s conscience has been seared with a red-hot iron, there is surely no-one with a morsel of human feeling who, after reading the horrifying list of cruel and evil treatments meted out to their enslaved fellow creatures, will not be left with a stench in the nostrils at such shameful treatment; and therefore, by God’s strength, we should earnestly undertake to refuse to support rum and sugar produced by their slave labour.”
There’s a final surge of energy at the end, with a reiteration of the date of the protest, and a final coded message, one of a number that appear throughout the piece.
I was asked by Philip Harper, conductor of the National Youth Brass Band of Wales as well as the world-famous Cory Band, to write this piece for NYBBW’s summer course in 2020. Unfortunately the coronavirus pandemic led to the cancellation of the courses in 2020 and 2021, so the triple premiere took place in 2022 in Bangor (4 August), St David’s (5 August) and Barry (6 August).