by Gwen Ansell,
April 04 2013, 05:51
MORE than 60 years ago, Queenstown, in the Eastern Cape, was South
Africa’s "Little Jazz City". Almost every black home hosted an
instrument, or a player or singer of note, and musical dynasties such as
the Matshikiza family were being established. By the time composer
Bongani Ndodana-Breen was born there, in 1975, apartheid had dismantled
much of the self-confident prosperity on which that bustling cultural
milieu had been founded, but the legacy remained.
"Growing up,
music was always present," says Ndodana-Breen. "One of my great-aunts
played the piano.
...
Based in
Cape Town, we talk in Johannesburg on the eve of the premiere of his
piano concerto, Mzilikazi: Emhlabeni, at the city’s International Mozart
Festival, and anticipating the July premiere of Credo, his oratorio
based on the text of the Freedom Charter, written for the University of
South Africa’s 140th anniversary.
Since those childhood
experiences, he has achieved much: work in Canada and the US; the
directorship of various ensembles and cultural organisations;
commissions from a dozen orchestras and festivals from Trinidad and Hong
Kong to Eisenstadt and the Wigmore Hall; operas based on the poetry of
Guy Butler, and on the lives of Chris Hani and Winnie
Madikizela-Mandela, and more.
The new concerto marked an
additional landmark: "It was my first piano concerto and, I believe, the
first such from a composer of colour here. It’s a homage to Prof
Mzilikazi Khumalo, a great man of music and letters, but also — because
it is based on his liberation anthem, Bawo Thixo Somandla — a bridge
between the two parallel musical worlds that have grown up here: the
white orchestral/classical world and the black choral world."
He
well understands the roots of that separation. Classical music had been
appreciated and played in many black homes before apartheid, "but with
the advent of the performing arts councils and Nationalist rule, a
barrier was placed around it. It became a property of cultural identity
for one group, no longer really about the art." His own education
reflected that. At the elite but relatively progressive St Andrews
School, South African concert music was studied "via compositions by
Hubert du Plessis. The same with literature: I think I was set one poem
by Mongane Wally Serote. However liberal, we still had to pass Cape
matric."
The school did encourage extracurricular awareness of
African culture, though, and he found alternatives. By his mid-teens, he
was writing his own music for school productions and church, and
escaping to the International Library of African Music in Grahamstown.
"I spent whole afternoons absorbed in the most wonderful field
recordings from across Africa."
...
Referencing
familiar themes, as Ndodana-Breen does in Mzilikazi: Emhlabeni, is one
strategy for opening a sound-world to new audiences. Employing
traditional musical textures is another. "Writing a concerto, one can be
haunted by Grieg and Rachmaninov. I decided to use different, sparse,
African textures. The piano is the first among equals, not a prima
donna. There are patterns from amadinda and mbira music and passages of
near-transparency. Sometimes I’m trying to make 65 orchestral players
sound like 12."
He remains optimistic about the future. "I think 2013 could be the year South African classical music turns a corner."
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