Sweet Soweto

  Photo Courtesy of Buskaid Soweta String Project The
Buskaid Soweto String Project and director Rosemary
Nalden will perform a benefit concert in Royce Hall
produced by Gillian Anderson of the X-Files.

By Howard Ho
Daily Bruin Contributor

British violist Rosemary Nalden has been compared to Roberta
Guaspari, whose struggle to teach East Harlem children was
dramatized in the 1999 film “Music of the Heart.” While
both teach music to underprivileged children, Nalden made the trek
all the way to South Africa in order to do so.

The fruit of Nalden’s teaching career there, the Buskaid
Soweto String Project, will make its American debut in a benefit
performance at Royce Hall on April 9, produced by Gillian
Anderson.

Anderson, star of Fox’s “The X-Files,” found
out about the project through a National Public Radio interview
with Nalden. Wanting to get involved with the project, Anderson
personally contacted Nalden.

“I had never heard of her and had never seen “˜The
X-Files,'” Nalden said about her first encounter with
Anderson. “I listened to her message and thought that this
person sounds genuine. When I told my kids about her, they fell out
of their chairs.”

Anderson, whose own musical tastes include styles as diverse as
classical, world and punk, found the Soweto children worthy of
attention. Nalden’s work struck a chord.

“When I’ve been moved, I like to participate in
sharing that with others and expand people’s tastes,
conscious and whatever else they can expand,” Anderson said
in a phone interview from her Los Angeles home. “I admired
Nalden’s courage and determination to give up everything she
knew as solid and dependable and teach these children who
didn’t know anything about classical music.”

In addition to this project, Nalden has had a successful career
as the chair violist on acclaimed conductor John Eliot
Gardner’s Orchestra Revolutionnaire et Romantique. Her
decision to found a children’s string orchestra in the
impoverished district around Johannesburg, however, reveals her
long involvement with the Soweto children.

“On the radio, I heard about Soweto not having instruments
to play,” Nalden said. “I sat around with my colleagues
and came up with the idea of playing railway stations to raise
money for them.”

Nalden’s fund-raising activities at one point involved 120
musicians simultaneously playing around London at 16 railway
stations. She also began to visit South Africa for more direct
involvement in the musical education of the Soweto children. After
a corruption scandal threatened the original project, Nalden
decided to restart it on her own.

“The structure was so wobbly and insecure that no
charitable organization would associate with it,” Nalden
said. “In 1997, I decided to start a new project. It was
almost a Pavlovian response.”

That project became the Buskaid Soweto String Project. Nalden
explained that, in British lingo, “busk” refers to
street performing with a hat to collect donations from
passers-by.

During the apartheid regime, Soweto was one of many townships
that were legislated to enclose black citizens and separate them
geographically from the powerful white minority. Though
apartheid’s eventual collapse helped bring wealth and dignity
back to the black community, the townships still suffer from
inadequate housing, poor sanitation and very little education.

“Soweto is still overcrowded and dirty,” Nalden
said. “It’s not the way life should be. Many of the
parents aren’t employed and educational opportunities are not
available for kids. It’s dangerous and volatile, not the sort
of place to be at night. In the black community, there was a
feeling of amazement, going in and out of Soweto as freely as I
was.”

Although people of all races are now legally able to live and
work in previously white-only neighborhoods, segregation still
exists, but now, due to economics rather than to politics. The
disparity between the rich and the poor in South Africa is among
the worst in the world.

Despite the political connotations of her work, Nalden’s
primary interest in Soweto is not political.

“It’s not about anything else but getting the music
right,” Nalden said. “I try to teach the kids, give or
take a yawn or sigh, to respect the music and the
composer.”

Besides increasing the children’s self-confidence and
academic ability, the project has also produced a professional
musicality that draws upon the spirit of the kwela, South African
township music. The group has played for Nelson Mandela and Queen
Elizabeth II, and has released two albums.

“The joy and inspiration of the kids floors you,”
Anderson said. “It’s amazing that they can have the
drive to master something not of need to them. It proves what can
come from seemingly nothing.”

The phone correspondence between Anderson and Nalden led to the
Soweto String’s first American concert, personally managed by
Anderson.

“When Gillian asked me what I wanted to do, I said I
wanted to go to America,” Nalden said. “I want them to
see America, and I want America to see them.”

Anderson responded by enlisting Artists for a New South Africa
to raise funds to support the trip.

“Legally, you need a non-profit organization to raise
money,” said Sharon Gellman, executive director of ANSA, in a
phone interview. “But this is Gillian’s baby. She
raised the money and we’re only acting as an umbrella
institution.”

ANSA also introduced Sweet Strings to Nalden. Sweet Strings, a
Los Angeles-based ensemble that is a counterpart to the Buskaid,
will be performing alongside the Soweto children. Proceeds from the
concert will go directly to both groups.

While Nalden’s ensemble is currently composed of about 60
members, Nalden hopes to add more children. That won’t be
very hard considering interest in the project is so great that
Nalden reports accepting only one out of every 20 applicants. In
addition, her original students have now joined her teaching staff,
expanding the size and success of the program.

“It’s not just a youth orchestra,” Nalden
said.

“It’s much more intense. I believe that comes out in
their playing.”

MUSIC: The Buskaid Soweto String Project plays
at Royce Hall on April 9 at 8 p.m. For more information, contact
the Central Ticket Office at (310) 825-2101.