KENYA: Cameroon's world celebrated bass-baritone Jacques-Greg Belobo performs in Nairobi

Record ID: 360890

  • Title: KENYA: Cameroon's world celebrated bass-baritone Jacques-Greg Belobo performs in Nairobi
  • Date: 20th April 2011
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (English) ELIZABETH NJOROGE, KENYAN SOPRANO SAYING: "It's an art form that even if you're a farmer in the middle of nowhere, if you hear a song that is so beautiful, you will still love it, it doesn't matter that it's classical music. It just speaks to your soul. But we need to lose that tag that it's only for the very rich because I know, from my experience, t
  • Embargoed: 5th May 2011 13:00
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  • Location: Kenya, Kenya
  • Country: Kenya
  • Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment / Showbiz
  • Reuters ID: LVA2PTHTVY7DYQD61M8VRXS45DHC
  • Story Text: He considered himself a musical anomaly, sometimes even a cultural one. The seemingly bizarre concept of a Cameroonian boy wanting to make it in the world of classical music would often discourage him from pursuing his dream.
    But Jacques-Greg Belobo stayed with it -- singing in opera houses around Europe, the once crippling concept became just another conquerable obstacle.
    Belobo began his vocal training in his home town of Yaounde, Cameroon's capital where he plans to set up a conservatory to train young aspiring classical musicians.
    While he says he is a fan of local Cameroonian music, his professional ambitions lay elsewhere.
    The 39-year-old won his first prize at a singing competition in Abidjan, Ivory Coast in his mid 20's, which launched his career.
    Belobo then went on to study at the renowned Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse in Paris where he obtained his diploma in 2001.
    He recently mesmerized classical music fans in Nairobi, a stop over in an Africa tour, where he gave a biographical performance, narrating in song, the twists and turns he experienced in his career.
    A classical rendition of "Let My People Go" was a crowd favorite.
    Belobo jokingly recounted instances when some of his peers sized him up, and him being black, they would sarcastically ask 'can you sing any gospel?'
    "We have this blockage ourselves, and this is something I've experienced. At certain moments, I would tell myself, yes, maybe. It's true that I was overly motivated, but at certain moments, nature would catch up with me and I would say to myself that perhaps this wasn't our culture, this isn't my culture, and that maybe I should do something else in which I felt more comfortable. But of course, it was with motivation," said Belobo.
    Belobo has won various international singing competitions, including five prizes at the celebrated International Belvedere-Competition Vienna.
    After his performance in Nairobi, the crowd was impressed with his talents and the story of how he made a name for himself internationally in a genre that many here consider a taste for the rich and bourgeois.
    "I found mister Belobo's story really moving, how against all odds he managed to get into the conservatoire in Paris, and how he achieved his dream of going all over the world singing, so I found that quite special and quite intriguing," said Leila le Guen, a Nairobi resident.
    "Kenya is a very different scene in that regard, in that the people are not as attuned, the people are not as exposed to classical music as you might find elsewhere, but there's been an increase you know, there's been a snowballing increase over the past couple of years, which I've witnessed part of it," said Moe Mualim, a Nairobi resident.
    Belobo's visit was also a chance for the limelight to shine on local artists like Kenyan soprano, Elizabeth Njoroge, who in her own right has introduced many Kenyans to classical music.
    Njoroge believes that classical music can be universal if people stop regarding it as the music of the wealthy.
    "It's an art form that even if you're a farmer in the middle of nowhere, if you hear a song that is so beautiful, you will still love it, it doesn't matter that it's classical music. It just speaks to your soul. But we need to lose that tag that it's only for the very rich because I know, from my experience, that there are so many different kenyans from all around who are thirsty," said Njoroge.
    Kenya is the twelfth leg of Jacques-Greg Belobo's Africa tour during which he will use revenues from ticket and CD sales to fund his dream conservatory back home.
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