Manchester-based composer creates requiem to honour enslaved Africans

Composer David Önaç said the piece would allow him to explore longstanding questions about where he belongs. Composite: The Guardian

A centuries-old insurance document detailing the trafficking of enslaved Africans began with the words: “In the name of God, Amen.”

For Dr Errol Francis, the artistic director and chief executive of the arts and heritage charity Culture&, the contradiction was striking: an invocation of God in a document that treated human beings as cargo.