‘It’s my age that’s the talking point, not that I’m black’: Toks Dada, the Southbank’s head of classical music

‘I spent so much of my teenage years practically living in concert halls’: Toks Dada. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

Toks Dada is reeling off the concerts that make up the opening weekend of the Southbank Centre’s season, starting tomorrow, and as he starts to run out of fingers he looks more and more like a child in a sweet shop. Who would begrudge him the excitement? It is, after all, the first proper season he has programmed in his role as the Southbank Centre’s head of classical music.

Dada started at the Southbank in December 2020. Days later, Christmas was cancelled and the performing arts sector once again found that any glimmers of hope regarding the lifting of Covid-induced closure were extinguished. “It was a challenging time,” says Dada, talking in the foyer of the Queen Elizabeth Hall as the Queen’s lying-in-state queue begins to form by the river outside. “But it gave us an opportunity to ask ourselves difficult questions about what classical music is today and how we could best support and reflect that.”