By Michael I Ohajuru (editor)
Hardback £35
John Blanke was a Black trumpeter at the Tudor court, present in archival documents including a letter asking for a pay rise, and in a striking image from a vellum roll showing the celebrations of the birth of a son to Henry VIII. I felt I had been given an amazing gift in reading this treasury, which includes a huge range of imaginative responses to Blanke. I first encountered him in Miranda Kaufman’s work Black Tudors, which I loved not least as it introduced me to a Black artisan with his own workshop in Tooley Street – near to our shop.
This large format hardback is filled with informed imaginings from historians and artists, which have featured in workshops and symposia run by the John Blanke project (see https://www.johnblanke.com/ and marvel at some of the images). I have missed all this, so it has been a treat to see the book. Praise quotes from some of my all-time favourite authors sold it to me too – David Olusoga, Corinne Fowler, and Paterson Joseph.
One of the most engaging entries I have read so far is by Vicky Lane, Curator at Royal Museums Greenwich, who finds the combination of archive image and text related to Blanke transformative: “Sometimes the archive forces us to ‘unlearn’ history. The rediscovery of John Blanke represents a significant paradigm for how we can reconceptualise race by unlearning”. Blanke is an equal, a skilled musician, present at the most important of state occasions. Dr Temi Odumosu also thinks about Blanke’s archival traces: “The archive presents John Blanke thinly, as a sketch, but still a necessary opening for us in the present”. This is history of real relevance to the present.
We would like to know so much more, how he felt, his real name, but this anthology shows that what we already have can be a great inspiration.
Review by Bethan