Music jams a hunger

Voices of freedom

TBy Cezary Owerkowicz

hese days Gustavo Dudamel is one of the most famous contemporary conductors among the younger generation.

Presently, he is the Music Director of Los Angeles Philharmonic. He made his world debut in Milano Opera La Scala to NY Metropolitan Opera and at almost all top philharmonic and festival halls leading its excellent orchestras. However, he never resigned from the post of Musical Director of the Simon Bolivar Youth Symphonic Orchestra in his native Venezuela.

The music star is paying back his debt. The Bolivar Orchestra is the world known famous Venezuelan musical education program El Sistema.

The program was established and founded in 1975 by musician and educator, Jose A. Abreu with a clear idea: ‘Music for Social Change’, calling it the ‘free classical music education that promotes opportunity and development for impoverished children’. In 2015 it consisted of over 400 musical centers catering for 700,000 young musicians mostly from the favelas (slums). For many it became a miraculous salvo to escape from the ghetto of poverty and

Owerkowicz

crime.

The idea of El Sistema spread to many countries including the United States of America but never with the same percentage of results. In the African continent the most successful is Republic of South Africa.

Once I referred to it in the Arab Times and the organizers from RSA saw it on the Internet and even continued corresponding with me sincerely. The country a history of stormy situations and tragic apartheid experience, diversification with eleven different languages (then cultures and traditions) understood without translation the language of music was the chance.

Change

‘I believe the El Sistema holds the key to the future of SA because we have seen that it works. It is a democratic tool for social change,’ wrote Shirley Apthorp, an opera critic writing in the Financial Times. ‘One hundred thousand pupils there know that Mozart composed the opera Ascanio in Alba, she writes, even average German doesn’t know it!’

However, today I would like to share with you some good news that the noble idea of Maestro Abreu and his followers has successfully made entry into another big and influential African country – Kenya. Korogocho, abbreviated by its inhabitants ‘Koch’, is the most crowded slum area of the capital Nairobi.

Spread over an area of 1.5 square kilometers 300,000 people live in this slum, in hovels and barracks knocked together from rubbish. No attempts have been made to provide sewage facilities, water or electricity for this slum.

If you ask for its localization people doesn’t hesitate: ‘It’s there, near that huge dumping ground’. Hills of dump ‘heaped’ up to the horizon part of these slums are seen from any part.

Acrid smoke and stink enter every room and the ‘garbage’ is burning day and night. Those hills are the Eden for marabouts looking for something to eat. People are competing to find tins, plastic bottles and thrown away half spoiled bananas.

Who attends a school is a lucky child. Wiki is. More, he decided four years ago to follow his classmate who attends the orchestra rehearsals. The most difficult was to choose an instrument

He decided to play saxophone because he had seen it already on TV. Sometimes is not easy to combine playing with school which is from 7 am to 5 pm. After school he runs for the rehearsal at the St. John Church. At 6:30 he goes to the library to make his homework. Rehearsals are also on Saturdays mornings and Sundays afternoons.

However ‘people of Korogocho generally are not interested in classical music’, says the 15 years old cello player, Maryanne. They consider that it doesn’t lead to anything good and is not profitable.

Music is played only in the countryside. In spite of this the girl has a different opinion, the same as her colleague, Charity. She started on violin but didn’t like the sound and after 3 months changed it for percussion. She is a corpulent person who has a good touch on drums. ‘Many people try to discourage me because of it I have to prove in front of them that I am strong and persistent.’

Charity’s dad left the family when she was two. Mom works very hard to raise the three children but employment is a God’s blessing there. Children’s education is her priority. Since the first moment I noticed that she will be good because of her talent.

Charity says that music jams a hunger (at home there is shortage of food). She likes the most Pirates of the Caribbean and hip-hop. When she says this, it brought a smile of her face for the first time.

Clinton is 13 and the tenor saxophone hangs from his neck to his knees. He likes soccer but most of all he likes to go to school. ‘There always something happens’. Sometimes he couldn’t – dad has no money for fees. I sat home bored and waiting for parents bringing evening some food.’

During the first year he attended rehearsals in conspiracy in front of dad – he wouldn’t agree. ‘It’s difficult to play with empty stomach than I tried to find something ‘suitable’ on dumping. The same is with sleeping.’

Elisabeth soon noticed that Clinton has a talent and prefect hearing. She arranged for him hearing at Safaricom Youth Orchestra – the ensemble for children from the Ghetto as well as for those well placed.

It is a vestibule to professional musical studies and career. Elisabeth Njoroge, a chemist by profession and amateur singer by love. She came back after seven years of work in London. She wouldn’t imagine what is life in slums but she knew what how potential music is.

Then she decided to enter with classical music to slums, starting with 14 children singing ensemble growing to 80 youth orchestra, rehearsing at the local ‘amphitheater’. Great, brave lady… a born leader!

Brian Kepher’s life is a perfect scenario for movie wringing tears from eyes. Born in Korogocho, the eldest among nine siblings was sleeping on the floor at the parish because there was no place from him at home.

The breaking point in his life was ‘a day’ in 2010 when he heard the Kenyan national anthem played live by military orchestra. ‘I never expected that something would sound so beautiful. The sound of drums was magical, disoriented me. Thanks to this, I became vaccinated by the love of music!’

One year later he joined the Ghetto Classics. His mom was selling vegetables in front of the parish where were held rehearsals and she told him about it. His choice was drums.

Records

He was so good that six months later he was accepted at the Kenyan National Youth Orchestra. Within one year he became a student of the Conservatory studying conducting. Exactly: At the University conducting studies starts during the fourth year that ‘I started myself trying to conduct YouTube records by Berlin and London Philharmonics.’

In 2015 Brian already conducted the Ghetto Classics. Between his first listeners was Pope Francis who was then visiting Kenya. The doors to the world were opened. Brian was the first ever African musician taking part at the very prestigious Gustav Mahler Int’l Conducting Competition in Germany.

As a result he was invited to the Lausanne Conservatory, Switzerland and to Classical Music Festival in Seoul, South Korea. Soon he will complete his studies in Nairobi. His dream is to continue studies at the University of North Caroline, at the Music and Philosophy Department.

Work with Ghetto Classics orchestra is for Brian a sort of paying his debts from childhood. He attended a school and University only thanks to the bursaries of private persons.

He believes that he also is able to change the fate – and lives of children which he is working on. Is Brian a Nigerian, even an African Dudamel in front of the world range career? I wish him warmly. We need such examples to prove that music is not only lovely, funny or dramatic abstract, luxury or popular decorum, ornament of my or our life; that it is an important social phenomenon, able to influence personal and social; life. Really!

The day begins here with the rising of the sun. Women on the street fry local pies. Breakfast is available even for 1.5 fils! Sometimes it is the only meal until evening, the time of next classical music rehearsal.

‘If you are able to possess an instrument, you can possess the life’ believes Elisabeth.

Editor’s Note: Cezary Owerkowicz is the chairman of the Kuwait Chamber of Philharmonia and talented pianist. He regularly organises concerts by well-known musicians for the benefit of music lovers and to widen the knowledge of music in Kuwait. His e-mail address is: cowerkowicz @yahoo.com and cowerkowicz@hotmail.com