Among the invited artists at the coronation of Britain’s King Charles III was the South African soprano, Pretty Yende. Coronations are not events that take place often. What made the moment special is not just singing for a new king, but the rareness of the occasion. After millions of global television viewers experienced her soaring high notes, stage presence, musicality and star quality, audiences were no doubt asking, “Who is she, where does she come from?”
As a scholar of African opera with a particular research interest in various South African singers including Pretty Yende – and what is sometimes called Black vocality – I would like to present a slightly different history of her than most writers do. My interest here is showing Yende as a product of global histories and processes across time and space. That her singing is in fact embedded in the globalisation of the 1800s and its continuity to the 2000s. The varied and painful tapestry that ultimately led Yende back to Britain has a long historical basis.
