Kadie Kanneh-Mason's family has been described as the most musically talented in the world. All seven children are classical music prodigies. Cellist, Sheku, 21, was BBC Young Musician of the Year and performed at Prince Harry and Megan Markle's wedding.
Aged from 10 to 24, all of the other six children are also gifted on the violin and piano, and together reached the semi-finals of Britain's Got Talent in 2015. The family are from Nottingham where the children all attended a local comprehensive school. Kadie has written a book about their extraordinary household called House of Music.
Photo: supplied
She tells Kathryn Ryan there was no plan or decision for the family to be musical, it simply started when the eldest child, Isata, began playing piano at age six and took to it very quickly.
“She was incredibly quick and loved it and then all her siblings followed and the story just grew from there.”
Kadia says music was an important balance to Isata’s sensitivity to the world.
“She was very bright but it made her very frustrated and we felt that music was a great way to fill up her mind because you can go as far and as fast as you like with music, it’s wonderful for your creative imagination and fantastic for your emotional intelligence, so it was a great help to her.”
When the other children saw how much joy Isata was getting from the piano, they wanted in. Kadia decided they couldn’t give music to one child and not the others.
“When they were a group of small children they all wanted to play together, so that was a whole other dimension to their music making, which was extraordinary.”
Kadia and her husband both had musical backgrounds, but she says they saw gifts in their children that neither of them had.
“My husband in particular is very talented in music, but we didn’t have the desire they had to go as far and as fast as they did. Probably because there were seven of them together, they were inspiring each other so we had this feverish group of children all sparking each other off.”
Younger sibling Sheku only took up the cello by chance after other instrumental forays into the piano and violin.
“He was really naughty when I taught him. He was five years old and he wouldn’t concentrate. He was frustrated that his brother, who was older, was better than him and I just thought this is not going to work.
“Then we went to a concert and he saw the cellos and sat riveted during the concert, came home and said ‘that is what I want to play’. That was it, from the moment he got the cello, he never put it down, you couldn’t stop him playing. I think he chose the instrument and never left it.”
Sheku gained an early fan in his younger sister who Kadia says would sit transfixed at his feet whenever he played. She became so enamoured she gave up the violin and decided she wanted to be a cellist as well.
She says Sheku getting into the final for the BBC Young Musician of the Year was a dream come true and the family had watched it together every year. But with the excitement came nerves.
“I think a lot of parents who watch their children perform know what its like to feel all the nerves for them. So, I don’t actually remember enjoying that final, I think I was just in a state of anguish all the way through it.”
While many parents might think it’s wonderful to have a gifted child, Kadia says it comes with a burden of responsibility.
“Your job is to make sure they have the instruments to play, they have the teachers, they have the lessons, they have the opportunities to take that gift somewhere and develop it. It was a huge struggle because learning a classical instrument is a very expensive job.”
She says along with the financial costs, there’s the cost of time and emotion.
“It became a huge family commitment which grew and grew and grew over the years and we didn’t predict it was going to get as big as has. Of course, we’re very glad we put in that time and commitment, but it was not an easy thing.”
Kadia came to Britain with her family from Sierra Leone when she was just a child and endured racism from a young age. She describes hating her own body and wanting to be invisible and says it was important to her as a mother to give her children a very stable home and make them love who they were.
“I wanted them to shine because I was always trying to hide and be in the margins and shadows. Now it’s a great joy to me that they are able to come out of those shadows and shine and say, look who we are – we are young black people, we matter, we can also play classical music, we can be something beautiful, people will listen to us, and maybe we’ll change the world into something better.
“For me, that’s a fantastic, wonderful thing.”
