The genre of music once associated with the high and mighty is now a fad that is attracting scores of fans and is being taken up with youth, writes Crystal Okusa.

Dark blankets sewn together form a backdrop in dimly lit hall. On stage instrumentalists dressed in black assemble together on the podium, holding onto shiny instruments. This is not the usual concert that emcees hype the show. Here every performer and members of the audience are connected telepathically with music. The GoDown Hall was filled with fans from various backgrounds. In fact, the new wave is catching on and every music fan is trying to sample the genre.

Classicals performance is no longer for elite and the privileged in the society but for a wide range of listeners in Kenya. Classicals are said to improve the intelligence of young kids when they start playing from a young age.

Instruments

Violins, Flutes, Obo, Piano, Trumpet, Clarinet, English Horn, Double base and Cheddar are the instruments used to express feelings, mood, thoughts and time of the year, in Classical tone. A group of violin players gather at the centre, while the double base, piano, and the cheddar on the side and the rest of the instruments at the back.

With the help of The Kenya Conservatoire of Music and the Nairobi Orchestra Expatriate youths are studying classical music helping most people to gain confidence from a very young age. Classical music that is a mostly embraced traditions in private school, since the teachers want the students to develop a listening culture and this is possible as for classic, one needs to be keen to be able to tell what music is being harmonised.

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Carols

This December being a festive season, most Classical themes are connected with Christmas, either due to the obvious liturgical references, perhaps due to the season that they composed, or simply because they sound well-fitting to the mood associated with Christmas. At the concert, a deliberate effort was made to link these themes to the nine Biblical narrations accepted as the conventional summary of the Christmas story.

With the Orchestra opening the show with a Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composition. A composer born in 1756, time when tonality and harmony had evolved in western music to a level of purity and sophistication. This is felt in his music when the Orchestra play verse by verse with a moment of silence in between the verses, to give one a feeling and moment to digest in the first.

Classical music has away of growing in you, as one Fredrick, now a violinist with the Nairobi Orchestra Expatriate, says. He went through moments of arts while growing up but settled on classical music as it gave more confidence, and helps him meditate too.

"When I was a teenager, I was going through an identity crisis. I tried the visual art, dancing Capuera — Brazilian dance, but when I tried classical music, it stuck and grew in me," says Fredrick Pessa.

New Career

Most of the people, who were introduced to this form of music, took it as a career and gave up the rest of their careers. They either sing in the choirs or train at the institution or join private schools as music teachers. Elizabeth Njoroge who is a friend of the Kenya Conservatoire, dumped pharmacy for classical music in UK and Canada where she joined university choirs. The passion for classicals grew in her that when she came back to Kenya, she started a classical show on Capital FM on Sundays at nine o’clock.

With the feeling that it is not reaching everyone as it should, Elizabeth, introduced a magazine called Classicals, that highlights on the news and events and as much education needed to know on classical music. All the effort is to change the misconception and allow people to understand classical music

Fredrick, who teaches classics at Braeburn School, says we should not confuse classics as a genre that wants to overrun pop music. Classical music has its own time and purpose, but urges the youth to take a chance with it when they want to go over their lives.

A couple of groups grace the evening with different tunes, likes of Winnie Mureithi, Julia Njoroge and the Moipei sisters, doing a higher note than Mariah Carey’s high soprano, making one wonder whether they are breathing at all.

More Kenyans are coming round to appreciate classical music resulting in our local composers being recognised overseas. Njane Mugambi, a local composer, got a chance to premiËre one of her works at Edinburgh Scotland a month ago.

Origins

Classical music is described as a structured, formal, well thought out, with its origin in the 1750s and early 1780s.

With pioneers being the church missionary, European settlers, and Italian prisoners having the strongest influence, the classical music tends to encompass a lot of church hymns and Christmas carols.