Kevin Volans

As a white man born in South Africa in 1949, trained largely in Europe in the 1970s, and eventually patriated in Ireland in the 1980s, Kevin Volans has often confronted in his music the issue of identity. "Like many white South Africans of my generation, I was brought up to think I was European," Volans wrote in 1986. "I went to live in Europe and found this was not true. I returned to Africa and was disappointed to find I could not really regard myself as African." It is this struggle with identity, however, that has contributed to his popular success as a composer. As multic...