Changing lives

As Buskaid celebrates its 25th anniversary, Leon Bosch explains the success of the South African string training programme

- Leon Bosch

Buskaid celebrated its 25th anniversary this year, and marked the occasion with a special gala performance at the Linder Auditorium in Johannesburg featuring the world premiere of Scarlatti in Soweto, composed specially for the South African educational programme by the British composer Julian Grant.

Founded by London freelance violist Rosemary Nalden a quarter of a century ago, Buskaid has inspired and trained thousands of young musicians. Its Soweto String Ensemble has toured the world, broadcast on radio and television, made CD and DVD recordings, commanded innumerable column inches in the media and been the subject of documentaries as well as several academic dissertations. The programme continues to excite incredulity, discussion and analysis in music education circles, and its remarkable achievements vindicate the power of music as a social force.

Buskaid has its origins in a string project in Soweto, run by the late Kolwane Mantu of the Soweto String Quartet. I knew Kolwane as a fellow student at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) in Manchester during the early 1980s, when he dreamt of providing a pathway to Manchester for other Soweto musicians – a goal he has now achieved many times over.

Buskaid was officially launched in 1997, with a concert conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner, at the same Linder Auditorium where it celebrated its 25th anniversary this year. The project takes its name from the coordinated busk at 16 UK railway stations organised by Nalden and her colleagues in 1992 to raise funds for Kolwane’s project. Against the odds, the programme has grown every year since then, as one instrumentalist at a time makes a meaningful contribution to the promotion of classical music in South Africa.