Author of
In Pursuit of Wild Beauty (Doubleday, 2028)
Soul Music: The Pilse of Race and Music (Gibson Square, 2012)
Valaida (Virago, 2004)
Candace Allen is the author of an acclaimed debut novel, Valaida, which chronicles the life of long-forgotten jazz trumpet player Valaida Snow. She is also the author of the non-fiction book Soul Music: The Pulse of Race and Music, an extended essay on the personal, social and political power of music as viewed internationally. After graduating from Harvard, she spent 20 years as an Assistant Director in Hollywood and was the first female African-American member of the Directors Guild of America. She has written on race, culture, and politics for The Guardian, Independent, The Times of London and the BBC World Service and has lectured internationally on diversity in classical music. She lives in London, where she is the co-founder of the Chineke! orchestra.
Candace Allen
Books by Candace
In Pursuit of Wild Beaty (Doubleday, 2028)
A sweeping novel about identity, inheritance, and the intricate bonds that link strangers, families, and nations, following Alex Walker—raised in the Black upper-middle class of the 1960s and 70s and shaped by the era’s radical political currents—across twenty-five years and several continents, first in 1976 New York as Alex returns from The Congo to face her father’s death, a complicated mother, and a life-altering secret and later moving to early-2000s France, where an art restoration residency reunites Alex with figures from her past during a storm-bound gathering that forces long-avoided reckonings
Soul Music: The Pulse of Race and Music (Gibson Square, 2012)
Can music change lives, and classical music in particular? In Soul Music, novelist and former activist of African descent, Candace Allen asks whether the pitched battles between 'our' music and 'their' music of her youth are alive among young people engaged in music study. She follows the beat of music — from Blues, Miles Davis as friend of the family, hiphop, musical to classical — in her own life to places where different cultures meet. Her personal journey takes her to the streets of London and Scotland, Venezuela, where the Sistema scheme has offered thousands of young people a route out of the ghetto mentality through virtuoso musical training, bringing global fame to the charismatic conductor Gustavo Dudamel; to the Middle East, and Daniel Barenboim's East-West Divan Orchestra in which young Israelis and Palestinians play side by side; and to Soweto and a pioneering opera project.
PRAISE
“Singing songs of freedom from Kinshasa to Caracas.” — The Independent
”Formidable.” — Evening Standard
”The most interesting book to date on the subject of social music projects like El Sistema, Buskaid and the Al Kamandjâti music school.... passion, zeal and candour...will appeal and infuriate.” — Marshall Marcus, Southbank Centre’s Sistema Research Programme
”Amazing wordcraft... devastating throwaway insights... how the generation younger than mine is using musical culture to inspire hope.” —Simon Hewitt-Jones
”Intriguing... series of reflections on the interplay of race and music, particularly western music... Enthralled by her grasp of the educational subtleties of El Sistema... There is much food for contemplation and much for confrontation.” — Norman Lebrecht, Arts Journal
”How it feels to be free. . .So powerful... She reveals much about what lies at the heart of any journey into so-called classical music.” — Guy Dammann, New Statesman
”Thoughtful and passionate and needs to be read.” — Alan Davey, Chief Executive Arts Council England
“The most interesting book to date on the subject of social music projects... passion, zeal and candour...will appeal and infuriate.”— Marshall Marcus, Director Southbank Centre's Sistema Research Programme
Valaida (Virago, 2004)
Valaida listened hard. After the melody's intro and Earl's left-hand-to-right-hand cascades of piano sound, her space opened, and Valaida jumped in. She blew. She entered the music, saw the chords, embellishes, the references to other songs as plain as day behind her eyeballs, and she used them. She jumped from bar to bar like a benzine-fueled billy goat. She didn't miss. She hit her peaks and whinnied in triumph. In the nebular light of the Terrace's mirror ball, she flew with the men who had backed Louis Armstrong at his best.
From a childhood in Chattanooga, to a debut at one of the swankiest clubs in Harlem in its heyday; from touring in the Jim Crow south, to showcasing in Shanghai and London in the 30s, the story of Valaida Snow is breathtaking. With a storyteller's ear and a blessed ability to transport her reader, Candace Allen has written a sweeping tale of love, degradation, laughter and longing - with a trumpet accompaniment you swear you can hear.
PRAISE
“Allen excels in evoking the do-or-die reality of jazz performance. She makes her language swing” -- The Independent
”Allen's detailed biographical research gives her novel an authenticity that only the very best historical novelists can achieve” -- Waterstones Books Quarterly
”The rhythms of 1920s jazz were dazzlingly conjured up by Allen's pacy prose.” -- The Times
”Music, love, addiction and imprisonment ensue in this deeply moving tale” -- Eve
”Seductive, colourful and atmospheric” -- The Sunday Telegraph