Chi-chi Nwanoku

Speaker 20:00

This is the B B C.

Presenter0:03

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Welcome to Desert Island Discs, where every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, the book and the luxury item that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away on a desert island.

Presenter0:16

For rights' reasons, the music on these podcast versions is shorter than in the original broadcast. You can find over two thousand more editions to listen to and download on the Desert Island Disc's website.

Presenter0:49

My castaway this week is the musician Chichin Wanaku. A double bass player, she is founder of Europe's first black and minority ethnic orchestra. Sixty two musicians, thirty one different nationalities. My guest contributes to the multicultural mix three times over. Born in London, her mother was Irish, her father Nigerian.

Presenter1:09

She was a talented child, and in the beginning it was sport that captured her heart. She trained as a sprinter for the Montreal Olympics, but a nasty knee injury put paid to her ambitions on the track, and so she swiftly turned her attention and ability to music. She shone as a student at the Royal Academy, and later was a founder member of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. And now, in a classical world still notable for its paleness and maleness, she's changing perceptions and challenging stereotypes with significant success. She says We're all born musicians. Since the beginning of time we've communicated with each other through a series of rhythms and sounds. Every one of us has a heartbeat that connects us to the rhythm of the earth. That's such an optimistic thought. But for those of us who are not, who really don't feel that we naturally have musical talent, you honestly believe that, do you? I do. Utterly. If you've got.

Presenter2:02

Any sense of coordination and movement, then there's absolutely no reason why we can't learn to do something physical. You've performed all over the world. Different audiences in different places. Do you sort of think, oh, it's going to be good here. I'm ready for them because they'll be ready for me. Or are there places where you go and you think, oh, they're a tricky bunch in this country? Does it vary a lot? I don't ever go with a preconceived idea of who I'm having that musical conversation with, sharing that time and space in that auditorium at that given moment. I always walk on to a stage with hope and excitement. I'm always usually really excited. Let's go to your first piece of music then.

Chi-chi Nwanoku2:40

It's my

Presenter2:42

Schubert's Trout Quintet. It's probably the most important and significant piece of chamber music for double bass players. We really don't feature in a lot of the great chamber music that's been written. And when I was a student at the Royal Academy of Music in my first year, I noticed that all the wind players got put into wind ensembles and things like that, and all the brass players got put into brass bands, and the string players got put into string quartets. The double bass players, we seemed to be in a category of our own, and we were just in orchestra that everybody else was in, anyway.

Presenter3:19

And so I've just hungered for a sort of broader palette of music. And I think by my fourth year I'd managed to cobble together four other people who agreed to run it through with me. But ironically, since then I've played it so many times with the most extraordinary pianists in the world and many, many of the most wonderful quartets.

Presenter4:44

That was part of Schubert's Trouts Quintet performed by Emmanuel Axe, Pamela Frank, Rebecca Young, Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer. Chichi Nwaku, 2015 was when you decided that you would set up this orchestra that would be majority, black and ethnic, minority players. Where does the name originate? What does it mean, the name of the orchestra? Chinneke. It's an Igbo word. And my father was Igbo from the east of Nigeria, the Igbo people. The word Chi is a very important word in the Igbo language. And Chi means God in the Igbo language, but not the god with the long white beard that sits on the fluffy clouds, not the 2,000-year-old god, but more like our guardian. And the Igbo people believe that everyone has their own guardian that guides them from the cradle to the coffin.

Chi-chi Nwanoku5:08

Yeah.

Presenter5:31

And then neke means creation. The creation of all good things, even the rain and the trees and the grass and all diverse aspects. So those two chi neke together, chin neke to me really sums up the spirit of all good creation. You know, it it's a difficult subject to tackle this, and I hope I can put it clearly enough. But given that, as you explain it, there are not enough examples of black and ethnic minority people learning instruments and having

Presenter6:03

great players to look up to that they see on the concert stages. Has it been a problem for you getting players of a good enough standard? Because there is not, culturally, that environment for those players to have flourished as kids?

Presenter6:15

Well, it's been mind-blowing for me on the journey I've had to find the players because I could count on the fingers of one hand how many musicians of colour I had worked with throughout my entire career on a regular basis and three of those were singers you know Wynard White, Roderick Williams and Patricia Rosario. So I had a big search on my hands. The assumption is that we're not good enough. People of colour aren't good enough. But of course that's not true. You know, people of colour are great musicians. It's just having the access and opportunity at the right age in life to learn. I began with asking soloist friends of mine who played with other orchestras around the country, around the world, if they'd noticed players that looked like me playing in these wonderful orchestras. I spoke to all the conservatoires across the country and the odd names started coming out. They led on to other names. I discovered that the more I searched, the more I found that the well of talent runs deep.

Presenter7:12

So that's the other question. Why don't we see more people of colour on our stages? And there's a whole mixture of things going on. How do people get through?

Presenter7:21

Audition processes, not just for the orchestras, you know, for the professional situation, but even getting into music college. And learning an instrument is not cheap. I'm going to ask you a little bit more more about the audition process a little bit later on. For now, I want to really get get a flavour of your orchestra and you first performed in the London South Bank 2015. What was it like when you went onto the concert stage that evening?

Presenter7:45

It was the most extraordinary feeling that I will never forget in all of my days.

Presenter7:51

We had a standing ovation as we walked on to the stage. We had no idea how we were going to be received. The concert sold out. There were queues leading outside of the building, and that cheering and standing ovation before the first note was hair raising.

Presenter8:06

Let's have some more music, Chichin Wanaku. Tell me about your uh your second piece. What are we gonna hear?

Presenter8:11

Well, it has to be Samuel Coleridge Taylor, um, the ballad in A minor.

Presenter8:17

Discovering Samuel Coleridge Taylor was just an extraordinary thing for me. You know, he won a scholarship on the violin at the age of fifteen to the Royal College of Music, and emerged as the greatest composer. This was commissioned by the Three Choirs Festival. They had commissioned Elgar to write something. He was too busy at the time, and he said

Presenter8:36

I suggest you give this commission to arguably the most talented young composer in Britain today, Samuel Corridge Taylor.

Presenter9:41

Part of the ballad in A minor op. 33 by the mixed race composer Samuel Coleridge Taylor, performed there by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Grant Llewellyn. You chose that, Chi-Chi, because

Presenter9:54

Important to you because it was the first piece of music that was played in public by the Chinekei orchestra. Yes. You mentioned, Chichi, that your dad was from Nigeria, your mum from Ireland. They married in the fifties. How had they met?

Presenter10:06

Their meeting was was

Presenter10:09

Epic. My mother had gone to the Hammersmith Palais with a Swiss friend of hers. They were both nursing students. And they hadn't had a dance all evening. And of course, in those days, you couldn't get up and dance around your handbags like we do today. You have to wait to be asked to dance. So they got fed up with waiting, and they said, let's go home. They were at the cloakroom, retrieving their coats, when in walked my father. And Dad just took one look at her, and he said, Where are you going? And she said, I haven't had a dance all evening. I'm off. And he said, I'll dance with you. And that was it. They danced for the rest of their lives.

Chi-chi Nwanoku10:19

Yeah.

Presenter10:48

And how did their respective families react to their romance and then their marriage? Horrific from m my mother's side. Um she was told never to darken their doorstep again. And she did as she was told. Really? She never went back to Southern Ireland. And did they cut all communication, her parents? Yes. My mother carried on writing to her family.

Chi-chi Nwanoku11:03

And so

Chi-chi Nwanoku11:04

Yeah.

Presenter11:08

telling them how she was getting on and what was, you know, how life was going and, you know, the man of her dreams. I came along. I was baby number one. She was still writing to them by the time I was born.

Presenter11:19

And funnily enough, when I was about three months old,

Presenter11:21

The doorbell rang one evening, unannounced, and it was my grandmother. Goodness. Unannounced. And she spent a week with us. So I know I've been held by my grandmother. She got on like a house on fire with my dad. That was the last time Mum ever saw her mother. Goodness. You know, she went back to Ireland. She had to make up some story about why she'd come to London. And that was it. And so that would indicate that the letters were being read. They were being read.

Chi-chi Nwanoku11:36

Yeah.

Presenter11:48

Just thinking about them as a young couple in London, either by the time you had come along or before that. You know, this was an era of.

Presenter11:55

You know, casual daily ingrained racism. How hard was it for them to make a life, to find a flat to live in, to get employment, and so on? There were those signs that people were allowed to put onto their rental properties. You know, my parents would follow leads, oh, there's a room to rent here, there's a room to rent there. They'd inevitably get there, and there would be a sign saying, no blacks, no dogs, no Irish. They thought, we'll take a chance, we haven't got a dog. Oh, my goodness. And then it's easy to laugh, but actually that's a misery. The thing is, because they had a sense of humour, they'd still knock on the door and they'd say, look, we haven't got a dog. Two out of three.

Speaker 312:20

Oh my goodness.

Chi-chi Nwanoku12:21

Uh

Speaker 312:21

Uh

Chi-chi Nwanoku12:21

BAH

Chi-chi Nwanoku12:22

But that's a

Chi-chi Nwanoku12:25

Yeah.

Presenter12:29

And the door would slam. But I mean, no, they were incredible. And I think the more that the society tried to push them apart, the more they clung together. And when they retired, they sold their house in Berkshire.

Presenter12:40

Moved to Nigeria and built a beautiful family house in the village where my father grew up. Let's have your next piece of music then. We're going to hear your third. I was very, very close to my dad, and it was one of those nights when there were so many stars packing the sky. You felt you could reach up and just pluck one out of the sky.

Presenter12:59

My Dad was holding me and I was asking him about what we were looking at, and that's when he told me that they were called stars, and and so he sang to me Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, and of course I think of that as my first music lesson.

Presenter14:14

Ronald Broutegum playing part of Mozart's Variations in C major. And so your family then, Chichi and Hanaku, moved to Kent when you were around about six. Tell me about primary school life. We fitted in fantastically as the only black family in Bleen County Primary School near Canterbury. There was four of us at that primary school and we were very welcomed by our friends, many of whom have become friends for life. And other friends, I mean, later told me, because they know they can speak the truth to me, that until our family arrived in the village, one of the punishments that their parents used to say to them, that if they were naughty,

Presenter14:55

A big black bogeyman would come and take them away, and that the families had to drop that because everyone loved my dad. You said earlier your father gave you your first music lesson by well, by singing to you. When did you actually start having piano lessons? When I was seven years of age, I w had already joined recorder ensemble.

Chi-chi Nwanoku15:13

Uh

Presenter15:14

At school. A year later I was at a neighbour's house and I was just playing at her house, and one day I just heard this sound coming out of another room that I'd never been into. Opened the door and there sat her big brother, Trevor, playing boogie woogie twelve bar blues, and I thought I need that in my life. And I refused to leave the room until he showed it to me. Proceeded to return to the house every single day after school.

Chi-chi Nwanoku15:14

Uh

Chi-chi Nwanoku15:30

It's not

Presenter15:38

until they finally, misses B., wheeled the piano up the road and gave me my first instrument. There was a particular night when mum came to pick me up, because I think I'd outstayed my welcome.

Presenter15:48

And as we got out of the house she said to me, Chichi

Presenter15:51

I know that when you go to play with Pamela, you don't play with her at all, do you? You just play that piano. And I thought, Oh dear, I've been rumbled that's it And she said don't worry, we're going to do all we can and they worked overtime, they did everything they could to get me piano lessons. Tell me about your next piece, Chici. We're going to hear your fourth.

Presenter16:11

When I discovered Nina Simone I was pretty blown away.

Presenter16:15

Because we've got quite a lot in common, and particularly the song that I'm going to choose, My Baby Just Cares for Me, because if certain fateful things had not happened in my life, I possibly could not have followed the classical music career that I was fortunate enough to follow. She was classically trained. You can hear Bach in her music and in her piano parts, and an extraordinary woman.

Chi-chi Nwanoku16:41

My baby don't care for sure.

Chi-chi Nwanoku16:45

Mappy B.

Chi-chi Nwanoku16:48

Hello?

Chi-chi Nwanoku16:51

Bumpy imagines care.

Presenter16:53

For me

Presenter16:58

My baby we don't care for

Presenter17:02

Cars and races

Presenter17:06

But we will care for

Presenter17:11

Nina Simone, my baby just cares for me. Um alongside the music lessons then, Chi-Chi, you were also in the athletics team. You you were a sprinter.

Presenter17:25

To those of us who can think of nothing worse than running 100 metres very, very quickly, tell us what the sensation is when you're good at it. What does it feel like?

Presenter17:33

Freezer bird

Presenter17:35

Just

Presenter17:36

at one with everything, really. And you had trialled for the Munich Olympics but had been unsuccessful and so the next goal was the Montreal Olympics. Yes, I didn't quite qualify for Munich when I was sixteen. Right. Montreal would have been a cert. Looking at my times at the age of

Chi-chi Nwanoku17:46

Right.

Presenter17:52

17. I was 11.8 and getting faster. So a very realistic goal experience. And I lived in a tracksuit or my school uniform. I was at Kendrick Girls Grammar School in Reading by then. And I played in the Ferkshire First Hockey Team and the Netball Second Seven. I loved team games. But the sprinting was my absolute forte. Halfway through my last year, I got a phone call from somebody representing Reading Ladies Football Club. So I got this call saying, could you be our main striker for a couple of matches? We've lost our main striker. And I said, sure, fine.

Chi-chi Nwanoku17:57

Yes, very minute.

Presenter18:29

Every time the ball came near me and I took off quickly with the ball, I would have about eight people trying to kick me. And so you sustained this horrific injury? I sustained an injury, leg was in the air, typical football injury, massive knee dislocation.

Chi-chi Nwanoku18:36

Horrific injury.

Presenter18:43

I

Presenter18:44

I was told in the hospital that evening that I would never sprint again. I was beside myself, as you can imagine. They booked the time for me to come in to have surgery because I had to have cartilage removed and all sorts of things. And during that sort of latent time, I entered the school music competition in which I played Chopin on the piano. I was quite a good pianist. I'd kept that going as a passionate hobby, and I was doing A-level music.

Presenter19:12

I won the competition. The next thing I knew, I was in hospital for two weeks. The day I came back to school, John Dussec, who was my A-level music teacher, walked up to me as I was walking into the school and said, Chichi, the whole school is devastated by what's happened. Headmistress and I have put our heads together and we believe that you might not play an orchestral instrument, but you're in the school choir, the magical choir, the recorder ensemble. We believe you could have a career in music if you took up a very unpopular orchestral instrument. I didn't know what he was talking about. I mean, I'd only been to two classical concerts in my life, and I was taken there by the school. And so he led me to this tiny room in the school that I'd never been in. And inside that room stood two double basses. And I looked at him and I said, sir, I'm the shortest girl in sixth form. I'm five foot nothing. I mean, they've got to be the biggest instruments in the orchestra. And then he said the right thing. He said, yes, but Chichi, when have you ever been put off by a challenge? He knew you well, clearly. And that was it. Let's fix in some more music. It has to be a piece of music that really sums up.

Presenter20:21

Being half Nigerian. It's called High Life Music, and the only time I ever heard this music was when we had family parties, gatherings with friends and extended family, and we danced and danced to it. And it was very beautiful and very typical of my father's people. I love it. And this particular track, Sweet Mother, kind of sums up our mum as well.

Chi-chi Nwanoku20:53

Drug a fee jazz.

Presenter20:54

Uh

Chi-chi Nwanoku20:54

Presenting you Sweet Modern.

Chi-chi Nwanoku20:58

Sing Mother, I'm not gonna forget you

Presenter20:58

Mother, I never gonna forget

Chi-chi Nwanoku21:02

For this summer, where you summer for me

Chi-chi Nwanoku21:05

Sweet mother, I never gon' forget it.

Chi-chi Nwanoku21:09

For this suffer when you suffer for me

Presenter21:20

Sweet Mother by Prince Nicombarga. Chi Chi Inwanaku, prejudice in the workplace, a very hot topic right now, as we know. In recent years, when it comes to classical music, some orchestras have introduced these things called blind auditions, where prospective candidates for a job applying for a place in the orchestra play behind a screen so that people who are auditioning them can't see their identity. And it said that's a combat bias, whether that's unconscious or otherwise. What do you make of it? Is it a good idea? It's very contentious. It is contentious, isn't it? But I, you know, it comes as no surprise to me that since that's been introduced, there are 25% more women in orchestras in America, for example. You know, it's not just for the colour of your skin, it's your gender as well. Because, you know, one of the things that was said to me-I mean, I remember as a first year, when I finally got into the Royal Academy of Music, my first concert at the Duke's Hall, my parents came down from Berkshire to see me playing in my very first concert there. And when I went to join them after the concert, my mother was particularly distressed because a tutor had told them that I was not going to have a career because I was playing a man's instrument. At that concert.

Speaker 321:48

Yeah.

Chi-chi Nwanoku22:27

Ta-da.

Presenter22:28

At that concert. Chichin Wanaku, people would look at you and think, well, she did it. Why do we need all this stuff about prejudice? If you're good enough, you'll get there. She got there. I think people are very comfortable with one mixed-race person on a stage. There I am playing a double bass, you know, it's breaking lots of perceptions: double bass, five-foot-tall, mixed race, all of those things. I now know many colleagues of colour. There's a handful who actually have positions with symphony orchestras, and most of those have won positions in the United States because they've won them from behind a screen to appointment. Every single one of them have been eliminated from audition rounds as soon as the screen has gone away. That's not a coincidence. This is absolutely true. This is empirically true. Our first trumpet player, Billy Hunter, he's principal trumpet in the New York Met. Our first oboist who won the principal job in the Utah. Our first bassoonist, principal bassoon in Atlanta.

Chi-chi Nwanoku23:06

This is absolutely not.

Chi-chi Nwanoku23:08

Office

Presenter23:19

One their positions from behind a screen.

Presenter23:22

We all suffer from a little bit of unconscious bias, you know. And we just got we've got to accept that, not try and pretend that we don't. We're at the stage now where we need to just accept it and let's look at how we can try and identify it and then work with it. Tell me about your sixth piece then. What are we going to hear now, Chi-Chi?

Chi-chi Nwanoku23:25

Yeah.

Presenter23:44

It was a very rare thing for us to go to a cinema. We didn't have spare money like that. We we never once went out for dinners or things like that, for example. But even my parents got caught up in the whole excitement about the sound of music coming to Canterbury. We got tickets. They were in the very front row, right in the middle, and we were heads craned right back looking at this huge screen.

Presenter24:11

We, of course, wanted to be every single child in that film. We rushed at and got the music, and we've sung it all our lives. We all know every single word of it. My children have been with me to Salzburg for a couple of weeks, and we had bicycles, and we've done everything that the whole thing, and sang all the songs. And I've just come back from a wonderful trip in Australia and.

Presenter24:33

My granddaughter, who's five, is also singing.

Presenter24:36

Dough a dear.

Presenter24:38

Let's start at the very beginning.

Presenter24:42

Very good place to start. When you read, you begin with ABC. When you sing, you begin with Do-Ray-Me. Do-ray-me. Do-ray-me. The first three notes just happen to be Do-Ray-Mi.

Chi-chi Nwanoku24:54

Yeah.

Presenter25:03

Do rainy do rainy fire.

Chi-chi Nwanoku25:03

Oh maybe.

Chi-chi Nwanoku25:07

Sola tea

Chi-chi Nwanoku25:10

Oh, let's see if I can make it easier.

Presenter25:15

Dore Mi, sung by Julie Andrews from The Sound of Music Words and Music There by Rogers and Hammerstein. So, Chichi Nuanoku, you set up this orchestra, as you've described it so well, to to give a professional platform for musicians of colour. I'm wondering to what degree it's provided a

Presenter25:31

A sort of springboard for them to go off and do more than they would have been able to do before. I'm seeing it happen both in the professionals and the junior orchestra. There's two orchestras, and the Chineka Junior Orchestra is just bringing tears to our eyes, really. Well, one of our juniors won the BBC Young Musician 2016, Sheikhu Kane Mason.

Chi-chi Nwanoku25:40

Threat

Presenter25:53

He's gone on to do extraordinary things and continuing to do so.

Presenter25:57

For this year's competition, we've got three, arguably four, Chineke juniors have reached category finals, which is just unprecedented. It's extraordinary.

Presenter26:07

Do you have any worry about this being a special orchestra that silos performers of colour?

Presenter26:15

Throughout Europe other orchestras say well they can come and join Chinike, it's fine. There's a place for them and that actually it could perversely in its sort of least optimistic incarnation end up in a way working against what it is you're trying to do. Do you have any concerns or worries about that? That's a really good question and of course I don't want Chineke to be the only place where musicians of colour feel welcomed and at home and that's why our doors are completely open. So far the rest of the industry is being very supportive. The orchestras are reaching out. We're going to be doing joint projects with all of the other orchestras in the country at some stage in the future. We've got a very exciting thing on the boil at the moment. I won't give it away. Not going to exclusively. No, no, not yet. It's very, very important that there is a place where people can really grow their skills and grow their confidence. The sign with the juniors, for example.

Chi-chi Nwanoku26:56

I'm going to give it an exclusive.

Presenter27:08

Their very first day, which was very like our the professionals' very first day, which was basically one day apart from each other.

Presenter27:16

At the end of six hours of rehearsal nobody wanted to go home. And apart from the Callie Mason family, no two musicians play together. Each of them are like me. They're the only one in their town or their youth orchestra wherever they live.

Presenter27:29

Seven of our juniors have won scholarships into London music colleges this year and other music colleges around the country. At least half a dozen have got into the National Youth Orchestra. This was not happening two years ago. So these children are there. It's just at different stages in your growing life. I think people you start to become conscious of your future. And you might look at the TV, you might look at the BBC proms. It's the biggest festival of the world and it's on TV. One of the only music programmes on the TV. And then you look and you look and you look and you don't see yourself.

Presenter28:00

I think visual messages are very powerful. And I think what's happened with China has been powerful. Let's have your seventh piece of music then, Chichin Wanaku. What are we going to hear now? Well, you can't really go anywhere without Papa Haydn. Josef Haydn, I've chosen an excerpt from his creation that he wrote shortly after he'd been inspired after he heard Handel's Messiah, actually, following his second visit to England.

Presenter28:31

He had also been invited to visit Herschel's telescope.

Presenter28:37

He saw into the galaxy, he saw into space, and I'm convinced that inspired him for some of this music.

Presenter29:51

That was part of Haydn's creation performed there by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Philip Langridge was singing, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. Chichi, Chinike had their first performance at the BBC Proms last season. The Trinidadian soprano Janine de Beek joined the orchestra to perform Rejoice Greatly from The Messiah by Handel. I wasn't in the concert hall, but I have watched it online. Pretty extraordinary. I also took a moment to check the latest figures of that online clip of her singing. They stand at around about sort of 4.1, 4.2 million views and rising. Well, must bring you great joy to know that 4.2 million people have enjoyed it. It's brought me such joy, but seeing the joy around me and hearing the joy from the audience and people that have written to us since, and Janine herself.

Speaker 230:27

Yeah.

Chi-chi Nwanoku30:27

Sizzling pause.

Presenter30:40

That was her London debut.

Presenter30:42

Discovering her and bringing her to our audience and singing that music off the scale is something quite extraordinary. It must take up a huge amount of your time. How much time do you have for your music? I'm working about eight days a week at the moment.

Chi-chi Nwanoku30:55

Yeah.

Speaker 330:56

Image

Presenter30:57

I have to get up earlier than normal to get my personal practice in. I've got, you know, all kinds of things on the boil. But I've learnt so many new skills in the last couple of years. Administrative skills, fixing an orchestra, running a management team. It is it's grand to talk about legacies, isn't it? Always feels a rather grand thing to put our minds to. But here we are. You've started something with an absolute purpose. You are as driven to do this as you were as a fifteen year old to get past that hundred metre tape in the best time, I think. When will you be able to sort of you know dust your hands together and think, right, job done.

Presenter31:33

It has to do with being perceived as an equal. Not just me. I can cope. I can get on with my life. I am such a survivor in that sense. But everyone else. While we don't have enough diversity on boards and managements and things like that, I think we're always going to be struggling. We're always going to be climbing. And I hear that it's been proved that in big businesses in the city, results have been greater. from those organisations that have got a more diverse workforce. And I have to believe that the same goes to say for the arts and music.

Presenter32:13

I don't want it to always seem like a novelty. I don't feel like a novelty. Chinnike is not a novelty. Diversity shouldn't be a novelty. We're all here together. And I think we s so much energy is used up

Presenter32:27

justifying yourself, or finding ways to not include.

Presenter32:30

that I think we could all get along a lot further if we could just join hands.

Presenter32:35

Tell me about your final disc of your eight, then, Chi-Chi. What are we going to hear now?

Presenter32:41

We are family sister sledge.

Chi-chi Nwanoku32:43

Yeah.

Presenter32:45

Family is everything to me. My core family, my extended family. And then when I first left home and I lived in a house with four other girls, other music students, they became like my next family. I have at least four or five friends from my primary school and then my book club. We sadly lost a member of the book club just recently, but I've got them all with me. Through everything, I can be who I want to be when I'm with these people who I call my family, whether we're blood related or not.

Presenter33:27

We are family.

Presenter33:31

I got all my sisters with me.

Presenter33:36

We are family.

Presenter33:40

Get up, everybody, and say

Presenter33:44

We are family.

Presenter33:47

I got all my sisters with me.

Presenter33:52

That was Sister Sledge, and we are family to cheer. It's time now for me to send you away to this island. As you know, you get the books. I will give you two books, the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible, and you get to take another book along. What will yours be? Black Shamrocks by Gas Nguaneku. Ah, you're by your brother. Your brother. Indeed. Just briefly, what is the story?

Chi-chi Nwanoku34:10

Yeah.

Presenter34:13

It's quite a read, and it basically charts the life of a mixed race child growing up in the UK. Okay, that's your book, then. Thank you. You're allowed a luxury as well. It has to be my tempur pillow.

Presenter34:25

I wasn't expecting that. It had to be that. Okay, other posturopedic pillows are available, I should say, but you can't. Well, you know, when you sleep in so many different beds around the world as an international concert artist,

Chi-chi Nwanoku34:32

Well, you know.

Presenter34:37

The awful thing is, if you're tossing and turning and you've got a concert weighing on your mind for the next day, if your neck is slightly out and it's very, very difficult, that that's the worst bit for me sleeping. It is where my head and neck are and so and shoulder. There's a travel version, you see, that I take with me everywhere.

Chi-chi Nwanoku34:45

That's the worst.

Chi-chi Nwanoku34:47

It is

Chi-chi Nwanoku34:52

I know.

Presenter34:54

And that's where it's going next. That's your luxury. I'm gonna force you to choose just one of these eight. I know it was difficult enough getting it down to eight, but which one would you choose to save?

Presenter35:04

It has to be Haydn's creation.

Presenter35:06

It's yours. Chichi Nanako, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. And thank you for having me.

Presenter35:31

I hope you enjoyed this edition of Desert Island Discs. You'll find over 2,000 interviews with artists, musicians, scientists, sports stars, comedians and more at bbc.co.uk slash desertisland discs. And I have a favour to ask, if you could rate and review the Desert Island Discs podcast wherever you download your podcasts, it'll really help other people find us. Thanks again for listening.

Speaker 236:26

This is the BBC.

Presenter36:28

Uh

Presenter36:29

Hello, I'm Jenny Murray.

Speaker 236:30

Yeah.

Presenter36:30

And I'm Jane Garvey. And we wanted to let you know about another podcast you might enjoy. You can download the Woman's Our podcast right now and hear great stuff like this.

Speaker 336:40

I'll tell you something though, this will never happen again, because there's precipitated by Harvey Weinstein is a network now of women who speak to each other.

Chi-chi Nwanoku36:51

Or this? You know, we play with action men. What what are men? Do you know what I mean? They're they're strong, they're hard. And I think there is a very big difference between being strong and hard. I don't know, there's a real loss of place, I think.

Speaker 237:04

Or this. Essentially, I put a human touch into machines. So I'm a creative writer for the personality of artificial intelligence. It's the podcast about women, but made for everyone. With arts and culture to sport and politics. You're sure to find something to enjoy and to make you think. So download the Woman's Our podcast now. It doesn't cost you anything.

Speaker 237:28

Well go on, what are you waiting for?