A furnace full of love and pain
Soaring performances. By
“I’m actually grateful for how things happened, the good and the bad. Because I wouldn’t have been to Buskaid; I wouldn’t have met Rosemary and had the chance to become a musician,” he says.
The development of the children at Buskaid is something Nalden likens to planting a small seed and watching it grow into a beautiful tree. Another small seed was planted a few years ago as Nalden was conducting a performance of Buskaid musicians at a church in Soweto.
A tiny three-year-old boy strolled into the church, sat down in the front row and stared intently at the playing musicians, entranced by what he was witnessing. Afterwards, the boy approached Nalden and indicated that he wanted to learn the violin.
That boy is Khumoetsile Legoale and even though he is at the beginning of his musical journey he has already performed in front of hundreds of people, at Buskaid’s 25th anniversary concert last weekend.
And just as she noticed “something special” in the young Twala all those years ago, Nalden senses that same specialness in young Khumoetsile.
And how does he feel when he’s playing the violin? Khumoetsile, now eight years old, answers with the simplicity of a seasoned philosopher.
“It makes me really happy,” he replies.
For Nalden, her staff, students, musicians and the
Buskaid organisation, the journey of the past 25 years has not been straightforward. Last weekend during the 25th anniversary concert, at a packed Linder Auditorium, Nalden took to the stage to tell the audience a story that encapsulated Buskaid’s history.
The story went back 25 years earlier to the same auditorium, where Buskaid held its first anniversary concert. Among the Buskaid musicians playing that day were two prodigious talents, Samson Diamond and Gift Moloisane, who were 12 and 14 years old. Diamond has gone on to establish himself as a world-class violinist and is now a lecturer at the University of the Free State, the leader of the award-winning Odeion String Quartet and concertmaster of the Free State Symphony Orchestra.
Moloisane developed a drug habit. Although he successfully rehabilitated himself, later in life he was found dead at his home in Soweto. Between the contrasting stories of these two men lies the tale of the highs and lows of running Buskaid over the past 25 years, said Nalden.
After Nalden’s speech, Twala entered the stage to perform a solo violin piece titled Romance in F minor, by the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák. Twala had done some research on Dvořák and found that by the time the composer wrote Romance in F minor in 1877 he had already lost three of his young children. This profound sense of loss and sadness was something that Twala says he could relate to.
So on a late winter’s afternoon in Johannesburg, the music written by a gifted Czech was played by a gifted young man from Soweto, who forged his musical style in a furnace filled with love and pain. He overwhelmed the auditorium with the sound of his soul and when he played the final note he received an extended standing ovation from those lucky enough to be there.
When Twala looks to the future he sees himself furthering his musical education.
He obtained a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Music in London but the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent travel restrictions put a stop to his plans.
But when he looks to the past he can make a confident assessment of his journey so far.
“Music definitely saved me. It saved me from myself,” says Twala.