{"id":55414,"date":"2017-12-20T23:02:26","date_gmt":"2017-12-20T23:02:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=55414"},"modified":"2017-12-20T23:02:26","modified_gmt":"2017-12-20T23:02:26","slug":"first-encounters-chi-chi-nwanoku-and-keith-pascoe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=55414","title":{"rendered":"First Encounters: Chi-Chi Nwanoku and Keith Pascoe"},"content":{"rendered":"

First Encounters: Chi-Chi Nwanoku and Keith Pascoe<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Irish Times<\/a>
\n2017-05-03<\/p>\n

Frances O’Rourke<\/strong><\/p>\n


\nChi-Chi Nwanoku<\/small><\/a><\/p>\n

\u2018Ireland brought us back together\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Chi-Chi Nwanoku<\/a> is a double bassist<\/a> and a founder member of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment<\/a>. The eldest of five children of a Nigerian father and an Irish mother, she pursued a career in music after injury ended a promising athletics career. She grew up in Kent<\/a> and Berkshire<\/a> and now lives in London<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The first time I saw Keith<\/a> was when we were college students in our early 20s. He seemed incredibly composed, confident, like a good fun guy \u2013 he had a mischievous twinkle in his eye which I liked. We weren\u2019t in each other\u2019s social circles but I registered Keith as a kindred spirit.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d only started playing the double bass<\/a> when I was 18, after an athletics injury. When I came out of hospital, my A Levels<\/a> music teacher said, you have music coursing through your veins \u2013 now that your sprinting career is over, if you pick an unpopular orchestral instrument, you could just possibly have a career. I\u2019d played piano since I was seven but I\u2019d never played in an orchestra before. A few years later I got into the Royal Academy of Music<\/a>…<\/p>\n

…I had been in Ireland just once before when I\u2019d taken my mother there in 1986. She hadn\u2019t been back to Ireland in 36 years, didn\u2019t know how she\u2019d be received: she was born in Cappamore<\/a> in Limerick<\/a>, grew up in Thurles<\/a>, but was kind of abandoned by her family after she met and married my father, an Igbo<\/a> from east Nigeria<\/a>, in London<\/a>. We grew up with lots of wonderful stories and memories that she gave us but she had a very very tough time. In London in the 1950s, it was \u201cno blacks, no Irish, no dogs\u201d \u2013 it was as much as my parents could do to find a roof over their heads…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018Ireland brought us back together\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,28,8,10],"tags":[20919,27858,246,16528,27859,1392,16526],"class_list":["post-55414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-europe","category-media-archive","category-uk","tag-chi-chi-nwanoku","tag-frances-orourke","tag-ireland","tag-irish-times","tag-keith-pascoe","tag-music","tag-the-irish-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55414"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55415,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55414\/revisions\/55415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}