Photo: Malin Fezehai for the Washington Post.
Steve Otieno (described below) rehearsing with the Ghetto Classics orchestra in Kenya.
Charitable work is complicated. It is not always possible to do the good for people that you intend. But if you are making a meaningful difference in some lives, that may be enough.
In Kenya, an orchestra called Ghetto Classics aims to help poor children achieve something fine and eventually move away from the dangers of their extreme poverty.
Katharine Houreld writes at the Washington Post about both the successes and failures of the orchestra.
“The violin’s quaver steadied and swelled through the gloomy concrete staircase, escaped through the wire mesh and soared over the packed-dirt playground before dissipating in the acrid smoke drifting in from the smoldering dump site next door.
“It was the last day of class before Ghetto Classics broke up for Christmas, and 14-year-old Steve Otieno was practicing his Christmas carols for his final performance of 2024. Undeterred by the demolition of his home last month, the floods that devastated his neighborhood in Nairobi this year, or the eye-watering stink of burning plastic all around him, he stroked the strings to coax forth each note of ‘Joy to the World.’
“ ‘Music makes me feel calm when I’m stressed,’ he said shyly. ‘Some people have drugs. For me, it is music.’
“Steve is one of thousands of children from the poorest neighborhoods of the Kenyan capital who have been introduced to classical music by Ghetto Classics. The organization was set up in 2008 by Elizabeth Njoroge, a classically trained singer who studied pharmacology at her parents’ urging but longed to return to music. A chance encounter with a priest trying to fund a basketball court at a Catholic school in the Nairobi slum of Korogocho inspired her to raise money for the first class of musicians there. …
“Now Ghetto Classics provides lessons to about 1,000 students, who feed three orchestras, a choir and a dance group. Njoroge raises funds to support its expanding programs.
“Ghetto Classics works in schools and community centers in Nairobi and Mombasa, but its headquarters is in the St. John compound in Korogocho, where a church, school and community all share space. A tarmacked basketball court and a dirt field for soccer are enclosed by a sagging chain-link fence and scraggly trees; on one side of the compound, the children have planted a garden to try to filter out the choking smoke.
“Ghetto Classics has performed for former president Barack Obama, first lady Jill Biden and Pope Francis. Alumni are studying in the United States, Britain and Poland.
They include one determined pianist who learned to play by watching videos and repeating the motions on a piece of cardboard on which he’d drawn keys.
“The lessons provide a refugee for students suffering from hunger, domestic violence and crime, said violin instructor David Otieno, who is not related to Steve. He joined the program a decade ago as a student; now he’s one of 45 graduates working as paid instructors.
“The tall, dreadlocked 29-year-old credits Ghetto Classics with saving him from the neighborhood gangs. He witnessed his first homicide when he was still in primary school, and as he grew up, the gangs sucked in friend after friend. His teachers became so worried he’d be killed, he said, that they collected money to move his mother and six siblings to a safer neighborhood where he could continue his music.
“Back then, he said, the group shared 10 violins among 30 students. Now he has his own instrument. Once shy and fearful, he has played in Poland, in the United States and at State House, the Kenyan president’s home in Nairobi.
“ ‘The violin gives you a voice,’ he said. ‘It makes you talk to people you’d never otherwise talk to.’ His students filed into the compound bumping fists.
“Thousands of kids enroll in Ghetto Classics, but most fall away. The discipline is demanding. … About a dozen young musicians who spoke to the Washington Post said their parents had never seen them perform. Some were single parents too busy working, some weren’t interested and some were actively opposed. …
“When opera singer David Mwenje started with Ghetto Classics, his father was skeptical, he said, but he came to see him perform and was won over — a bittersweet memory to which Mwenje clings now that his father has died.
“Mwenje sang for six years, including for Pope Francis at the Vatican, before turning professional in 2021. His first audition landed him the role of Okoth — a messenger who must tell a village medicine man that his daughter has taken up with foreign missionaries — in Nyanga: Runaway Grandmother with Baraka Opera Kenya at the Kenya National Theatre. It was the first ray of hope in years darkened by his father’s death and the covid pandemic that shuttered his school, he said.
“ ‘Through this opera, I could control all my pain,’ he said. ‘I also love to sing “Bring Him Home,” from Les Misérables, because the song reminds me of my dad and I feel like I’m pleading with God to bring him home.’ ”
More at the Post, here.
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