Music Fund in Kinshasa, Congo

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11-07-2007

This month, the Brussels based organisation Music Fund has started an important new project in the Democratic Republic of Congo by sending piano-expert Pol De Winter (from Pianomobil, Antwerp) to Kinshasa for an initiation course into repairing and tuning of pianos.

Music Fund has decided to start a longterm partnership with the Institut National des Arts (INA), the music school of Kinshasa. Our partnership will the coming years be organised around the following main axes: (1) yearly 10-day initiationcourses in repair and tuning of music instruments at the school in Kinshasa, (2) yearly 3-month training courses at repair workshops for music instruments in Belgium and France, for a selection of 3 to 4 students or teachers from INA, (3) from July 2008 on: the installation and equipment of a repair-workshop at INA in Kinshasa, allowing the institute to repair its own instruments, as well as instruments from orchestras, bands and individual musicians in Kinshasa, (4) partnerships will be developed with music conservatories in France and Belgium in order to develop training programmes around music pedagogy of the teachers of INA, and (5) programmes allowing for exchanges of Congolese and European musicians.

Alltogether a very ambitious programme, which we expect will to take a very important place in our activities, next to the other partnerships which we are continuing to develop in Israel, Palestine and Mozambique.

Here are some pictures of the initiation-workshop which Pol De Winter is giving at INA in Kinshasa at the beginning of this new partnership:

Kin
Pol is working on a Steinway concert piano which King Baudouin of Belgium has offered as a present to the INA in the 70s, but which is in a very bad state, because of termites attacking it. At the end of his 10-day stay, this piano will again be able to be used as a fairly OK study-instrument for the students of the school.

Kin
Intense and long days work indeed for Pol and his class. I only look, as others work. Pol and I agreed on one thing, amongst many: Pol does the work, I do the talking.

Kin
Pol has taken the mechanical parts of the Steinway piano out of the piano and is checking each and every small part of, cleaning it and repairing where needed.

Here Pol De Winter is teaching the basics of piano tuning to the participants of his initiation-workshop. They are doing this on the Yamaha piano which they have entirely repaired during the workshop.

The Institut National des Arts has a total of 7 pianos. Six were in bad conditions. During Pol's workshop 3 have been refurbished. From next year on, the INA will have at least one technician able to continue this repair and tuning work in Kinshasa, thanks to the training programme this person will have followed at Pol's workshop in Antwerp from April to June 2008.

Pol De Winter will himself be back in Kinshasa in July 2008. Music Fund will then also send 2 other instrument-experts, specialised in wind instruments, a priority in this city which has so many brassbands.

Kin
Here you can see 'tampons' for saxophones, which Augustin Kapiaka has made himself out of recuperated plastic. He is one of the persons who will receive a three month training in Belgium next year. He is also the only person in town who has taught himself to do some basic repairs to wind instruments. The results of his work are amazing and I am sure that he will profit enormously from being able to work with an expert as Yves Treuttens in Brussels next year.