The Citizen (Dar es Salaam)
Billie Odidi
27 May 2011
opinion
Africa is everything that classical music is not: famous music producer Brian Eno once remarked.
According to him, classical music is so digital, so cut up, rhythmically, pitch wise and in terms of the roles of the musicians.”
Brian Eno who is famous for his work with Afro beat musicians, including Nigeria’s Seun Kuti, was expressing a view that many people hold on the appeal of classical music in Africa.
It is regarded as stuffy, quaint or elitist European music, which is boring and of no relevance to the rhythm driven African taste.
Could this antipathy be fueled by ignorance on a genre that has largely been inaccessible to most?
It is almost a habit to label any alien music as ‘classical’ or even ‘jazz.’
Though from the technical mastery, the two styles are miles apart. Experts like to distinguish between orchestral and choral, from symphonies to variety shows. There is light music typically performed at popular concerts and the serious works that appeal to the classical music purists.
Cameroonian born baritone Jacques-Greg Belobo has been at the vanguard of trying to change attitudes towards all forms of classical music in Africa.
“This music is seen as white people’s music and non African. I want to show that there are no limits in the arts,” says the man known as Africa’s Pavarotti, after the late, great Italian tenor.
Though he is based in Germany, Belobo has undertaken various tours throughout Africa, and now aims to start an international music school in his country of birth, Cameroon.
It is in such foundations that experts say will expose a whole new generation of Africans to classical music.
“The average parent may not have enough money to pay for enough lessons over a number of years,” says Valerie Kent who is a member of the Nairobi Orchestra, which has been performing since 1947.
Kent admits that the cost of instruments is a huge impediment to the progress of classical music.
“A decent piano is expensive, and so are orchestral instruments,” she says.
She adds that most parents would rather have their children apply for medicine or engineering. Music is just not seen as a career.
Born in 1971 in Yaounde, Belobo was already a member of the choir as an 11 year old in a country where most people love traditional music or pop.
His life changed when he saw an opera performance on TV.
“I immediately knew that was my music,” he recalled, while on the Kenyan leg of his East African tour last month.
From that first encounter, he learnt his first classical songs from any CDs he could lay his hands on. Today Belobo performs a mixture of classical opera, spiritual and modern classical.
“Everybody is unique, but it is my voice that makes me stand out from the rest, “he says.
Belobo presentation of Western melodies, Afro American spirituals and modern classical opera arias, which are a manifestation of his personal story; setting out to achieve the seemingly impossible
His performances continue to amaze crowds who have watched him at concerts in many parts of the world. After listening to the huge bass baritone voice and the imposing figure he cuts on stage, most audiences leave his performances convinced that he is American.
“Everyone knows Cameroon for football. Why not opera music,” he asks.
The truth is that African classical performers and composers are few and far between. Even in South Africa, where the Johannesburg International Mozart festival is held annually in January to celebrate the legendary composer’s birthday, classical music is still viewed through the prism of social class, and even race.
South African composer Mokale Koapeng stoked controversy when he talked of misconceptions that “classical music is not for black people.” The Johannesburg Philaharmonic Orchestra accused the composer for misinforming the black community about the significant contributions of black people to Western classical music.
Koapeng whose own composition of the Psalms of David premiered at the Mozart Festival holds the view that South African orchestras should include more works by black composers.
“We need positive interaction between different music communities, some of my jazz brothers should collaborate with classical composers and performers,” he says.
Having founded the Soweto Youth Jazz Orchestra and composed and conducted African choral music Koapeng certainly knows about the possibilities that are open to creating a classical fusion.
Valerie Kent from the Nairobi Orchestra is excited by attempts to bring classical music into an African contemporary setting. She cites the example of Kenyan composer Njane Mugambi whose classical fusion was recently performed to much acclaim by the Meadows Orchestra in Edinburgh, Scotland.
However, Kent reckons that such experiments can only succeed if there are enough experienced and networked promoters to help classical musicians from Africa gain international exposure.
Ugandan Ivan Kuwiwa, who graduated as best pianist of the year at London’s famous Guildhall School of Music and Drama, provides an illustration of how talent can benefit from such exposure.
As a primary school boy, Kuwiwa’s skills were spotted by Maxim Vengerov, the world’s leading violist, who invited him to perform with the Essen Philharmonic in Germany. He eventually landed a music fellowship at 15.
“He had the ability, love and passion of music, but also the luck to get the best education,” says Kent.
The level of teaching and technical mastery required for classical musicians to get to the highest standards is not available in most parts of Africa, even with more teachers graduating with high qualifications in countries like Kenya.
In Europe where many Africans have received their music training, a really good student must be able to play three instruments by the age of 13 before taking up diploma at school. Even then most do not end up as professional players or composers.
The celebrated Jacques-Greg Belobo may have started his voice lessons as a young boy in Cameroon but he only attained the professional level after moving to France, then Germany.
Belobo now conducts opera coaching lessons wherever he performs in Africa.
“I have been training musicians who have five or seven years of opera singing in Europe, but the talent I find in Africa is exceptional,” he says.
“All they need is technical practice.”
He loves to use the analogy of the dominance of African footballers in the top leagues in the world when talking about classical music.
“Just like Africans have proved to be the best footballers in the world, so too we can be the finest opera singers.”
AllAfrica – All the Time
Link:
Classic Music Isn’t Allien As Many Think