Composer transforms slave trade insurance documents into requiem for the enslaved

A centuries-old insurance document began with a prayer: "In the name of God, Amen." The words sat atop a record of human trafficking, a contradiction that struck Dr Errol Francis with particular force. As artistic director of Culture&, a heritage charity, he found himself holding documents that Lloyd's of London had once used to insure the ships and the enslaved Africans aboard them during the transatlantic trade. The juxtaposition sparked an idea: what if these instruments of commerce could be transformed into something else entirely—a requiem for those whose lives they had reduced to cargo?

That vision became Atlantic Requiem, a 40-minute work by Manchester-based composer David Önaç, which premiered on Sunday at LSO St Luke's in London, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and BBC Singers under the baton of Grammy-winning conductor Malcolm J Merriweather. The piece emerged from Culture&'s research into Lloyd's historical role in the slave trade, work that the insurance market itself had commissioned and, in time, acknowledged. Lloyd's sponsorship of the requiem sits alongside its recent launch of an Inclusive Futures programme aimed at supporting Black and ethnically diverse communities—a response that some view as insufficient, though Francis is careful to separate the artistic work from questions of financial reparation.

The composition weaves together Catholic liturgy, jazz, gospel, and contemporary classical music—traditions born on both sides of the Atlantic, shaped by the very history the work confronts. For Önaç, who carries heritage from both continents, the project offered a chance to explore longstanding questions about belonging and identity. He spoke of the piano's geography, how the five black keys and two significant white keys yield the seven-note blues scale, itself a product of the musical and cultural experience of enslaved Africans. The work became, in his hands, a canvas where dual traditions could enrich one another rather than remain divided.

But the requiem does not shy from horror. Its second movement draws directly on testimony preserved by the Newport Historical Society—an account from 1791 concerning the brig Polly, commanded by James DeWolf. A crew member named John Cranston described what happened when an enslaved woman suspected of smallpox fell ill during the voyage from Africa to the West Indies. The captain ordered her bound to a chair, gagged, and thrown overboard, fearing infection would spread among the crew. Cranston's words, recorded in a grand jury document, became the text Önaç set to music. The composer found the emotional weight almost unbearable to work with. What struck him most was the captain's own words in the record: he was sorry because he had lost such a good chair.

Francis spoke of the tears that came when confronting these passages, acknowledging both the people lost and the survival of those who endured. "It is about people who've passed away, but it's also about the fact that we have survived this incredible trauma," he said. For him, the requiem's power lay in its refusal to treat these documents as mere historical artifacts. By extracting the words and setting them to music—by making them audible, emotional, undeniable—the work forced a reckoning with what the original documents had obscured: the human cost of commerce.

The piece ultimately moves toward reconciliation and joy, but not before making the listener sit with the full weight of what was lost. Önaç described the work as commentary on the present as much as the past. In a time of polarization and segregation, he said, the black and white notes of the piano became a visual and sonic metaphor for division itself. The requiem asks not only what we owe to history, but what we might learn from it about the world we inhabit now. The performances took place during Black History Month, a timing that underscored the work's dual purpose: to honor the dead and to speak to the living.