African influence on the royal wedding

THE EDITOR: I could not be more proud of the significance of African influence on the modern world than I could have been as I watched the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the new Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

My pride comes in the context of the continuing injustice that was done to the Windrush generation, whose latest abuse was actually started under the auspices of current British Prime Minister Theresa May when she was the home secretary, between 2010 and 2016.

May I remind all that this is the fourth year of the International Decade for People of African Descent. There is also an ongoing Caricom-led movement for reparations for African enslavement and native genocide. Ordinary Africans (and not so ordinary Africans) need to see their impact on the wedding for what it was worth.

This is what BBC News journalists Victoria Park and Andree Massiah wrote, “As Prince Harry married Meghan Markle, there was a lot of comment from American people about black influence on the wedding ceremony. It combined elements of a traditional royal wedding with black culture. In the US, people have used the hashtag #BlackRoyalWedding and welcomed the diverse feeling of the wedding. Top terms tweeted were ‘gospel choir,’ ‘Sheku Kanneh-Mason’ and ‘Martin Luther King.’”

I was impressed. African contributions made that wedding what it became despite the hoopla about British pageantry.

There was the dynamic Most Rev Michael Curry, the first black presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church which is a part of the Anglican communion. Preaching in the age-old African-American way about the power of love, he quoted from Martin Luther King to French Jesuit philosopher/priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin to the spiritual, There is a Balm in Gilead.

He said, “… well, there were some old slaves in America’s antebellum south who explained the dynamic power of love and why it has the power to transform. They explained it this way. They sang a spiritual, even in the midst of their captivity; it’s one that says there’s a balm in Gilead. A healing balm, something that can makes things right.

“There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul … If you cannot preach like Peter and you cannot pray like Paul, you just tell the love of Jesus how he died to save us all.”

The gospel singers of Kingdom Choir from South East London rendered Ben E King’s Stand By Me, conducted by their founder Karen Gibson.

And finally there was the impressive 19-year-old cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason from Nottingham. He interpreted three European pieces including Franz Schubert’s immortal Ave Maria.

I have to paraphrase a comment from Reginald Dumas, former TT diplomat and senior public servant. He pondered how was it that people like the British were able to colonise the ancestors of African people.

AIYEGORO OME, Mt Lambert