The New York Times: Stephen Kamau, 15, a student
in the Ghetto Classics music program, practices on his cello in
Nairobi’s Korogocho slum. In the background is the huge open-air dump
next to the slum.
Credit
Sergio Ramazzotti/Parallelozero
NAIROBI,
Kenya — As thick white smoke from a huge garbage dump billowed into the
sky and the smell fell over the audience, the brass section took deep
breaths, the woodwind players pursed their lips and the string
performers gripped their bows. Brian Kepher, the 21-year-old conductor
of the Ghetto Classics orchestra, lifted his baton, gave a slight nod
and cued the teenagers to begin.
The
orchestra is part of the Ghetto Classics music education program, which
benefits youth in the slum of Korogocho and other poor areas. The
program, created in 2008, is one project of Kenya’s Art of Music
Foundation, set up in 2009 to enrich the lives of young Kenyans through
music.
The
musicians, wearing clothes such as Ghetto Classics T-shirts and jeans
as well as soccer warm-ups with flip-flops, performed works that
included Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” and Hans Zimmer’s “Pirates of the
Caribbean.” As the last notes of the final piece, “Hapo Zamani” by
Miriam Makeba, echoed through the rundown cement amphitheater at the St.
John’s Catholic primary school and community center in Korogocho, the
audience applauded wildly.
For
the Ghetto Classics orchestra, which was started in 2009 by the
classical music enthusiast Elizabeth Njoroge, this concert on Sept. 25
was special. Though the musicians have performed for dignitaries like
President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya and Pope Francis, this was the first
time their families and friends had heard them perform. And for most of
the 250 or so in the audience, it was their first exposure to classical
music.
Margaret
Wambui, who scavenges in the dump for a living, was so excited to see
her 16-year-old son, Simon Mungai, play the trombone that she was the
first audience member to arrive. He remembered the exact day he joined
the Ghetto Classics program. “It was February the 2nd 2014,” he said. “I
remember that day because for me it is like my second birthday.”
Martha
Aluoch, 19, agreed. “Elizabeth is like a second mother to me,” she
said, packing up her violin after the concert. “What I find here, it is
hard to find at home.”
Ms.
Njoroge, 45, is a mother figure to the teenagers of the Ghetto Classics
program and orchestra, and she is also one of the leading figures for
getting young people across Kenya involved in classical music through
The Art of Music Foundation, which she created in 2009. The Ghetto
Classics orchestra has about 80 members from roughly the ages of 14 to
20, and there are over 600 children from Korogocho and five other poor
communities who participate in the Ghetto Classics music education
program. In January the Ghetto Classics education program will be
expanding to the coastal city of Mombasa.
She
also founded the Kenya National Youth Orchestra, or K.N.Y.O., and runs
the Safaricom Youth Orchestra, or S.Y.O. The K.N.Y.O. — which started in
2010 and is made up of young people from across the country who are
from 14 to 24 — meets three times a year for intensive rehearsals and a
few concerts, including a performance in July 2015 at the state dinner
held for President Obama. On Oct. 23 the K.N.Y.O. performed with over
250 children from six schools in disadvantaged areas of this city as
part of New York’s Carnegie Hall Link Up, a global program that teaches
music to young people by having them play with local orchestras.
The
S.Y.O., which was formed three years ago by telecom company Safaricom’s
chief executive, Bob Collymore, practices every Saturday at the
company’s headquarters here. It includes 18 members of the Ghetto
Classics orchestra, children from middle-class and wealthy Kenyan
families, and expat children. They hold a number of concerts throughout
the year including performing at February’s annual Safaricom
International Jazz Festival.
“Elizabeth
is the indefatigable visionary for the power of classical music in
Kenya,” said Eric Booth, a New York-based arts education specialist who
has served on the faculty of Juilliard and the Lincoln Center Institute,
and who introduced Ms. Njoroge to the people behind Link Up.
Ms.
Njoroge grew up near this city and fell in love with music when she
began piano lessons at 4. “Music was encouraged until I started my A
Levels,” she said, referring to her last two years of school. “That was
when I was told ‘no more.’ ”
She
studied biochemistry at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario,
Canada (where she was a member of the school choir and took singing
lessons) and had what she calls an “existential crisis” before she began
pharmacy school at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.
“My
voice teacher in Canada said to me, ‘You need to study music,’ so when I
got to Glasgow I went to the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama
and picked up a prospectus,” she said with a chuckle. “For one week, I
really thought I was going to go for it, but I did not have the guts.”
Instead she sang in choirs in her free time, in Glasgow and later when
she moved to London to work in hospitals.
When
Ms. Njoroge moved back here in 2003, she was struck by not only how few
classical music options there were but also how they seemed to mostly
focus on the white Kenyan and expat communities. “I think at that time
the Nairobi Orchestra had one black person in it,” she said.
She
started holding recitals for friends across the city, began a classical
music newsletter and then a glossy classical music monthly magazine.
In
2007 she began hosting a weekly two-hour classical music radio program,
sponsored by Safaricom. “There was one guy who called in who said he
played my show in his matatu,” she said, referring to the privately
owned minibuses used in Kenya. “That showed me that all sorts of people
loved classical music, and it needs to be on the menu.”
The
community project that became the Ghetto Classics program began with
just 14 children using instruments borrowed from the Kenya Conservatoire
of Music. A Catholic priest from Korogocho asked Ms. Njoroge to teach
music at the community center he ran in Korogocho, and she brought in
Levi Wataka, a music teacher who is now the K.N.Y.O. music director.
They could only afford to meet every other week, but thanks to donations
they eventually had enough instruments for more regular lessons.
The
project limped along for a number of years through private donations
and the determination of Ms. Njoroge’s growing staff, but in 2013 Mr.
Collymore, who had taken over as chief executive of Safaricom, asked Ms.
Njoroge to form the S.Y.O. “We decided that we would bring together
these children who are living in the most desperate conditions with
similarly talented kids from more privileged backgrounds,” Mr. Collymore
said in an email. “After all, music doesn’t really recognize economic
boundaries so why should we?”
The
telecom company then began the Safaricom International Jazz Festival,
and proceeds from the ticket sales help fund the Ghetto Classics
program. As part of the festival, international musicians like Branford
Marsalis, Kirk Whalum and Salif Keita were brought to Korogocho to hold
master classes.
Mr.
Whalum, a Grammy-winning saxophonist, was so inspired that he plans to
write an original score for the Ghetto Classics orchestra, while Mr.
Marsalis has donated reeds, which are hard to find in Kenya.
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