Meet Africa’s Pavarotti

“Africa is everything that classical music is not,” a famous music producer once said. 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 limited 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 tastes. But, wait a minute, could this antipathy be fuelled by ignorance on a genre that has largely been inaccessible to the masses?

It is almost a habit to label any music that is alien to the ear as ‘classical’ or even ‘jazz.’ Never mind that apart from 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.

It is this foundation in school 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.

American feel

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 adding that most parents would anyway like their children to 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.”

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.