07-07-2008
Kinshasa: opening of repair workshop
This week Music Fund opened a repair workshop together with and at the Institut National des Arts.
For the moment, only Augustin Kadiata - who followed a three months internship with expert Yves Treuttens in Brussels - will be working in this workshop to repair wind instruments. The coming years we will train more people in the techniques of repairing music instruments - not only wind instruments, also piano and guitarres - so that the music school will dispose of a workshop able to do basic repair work to the instruments of its students, as well as instruments from musicians from outside of the school.
The young wind instrument technician Pierre Helou studied at the lutherie school ITEMM (Institut technologique européen des métiers de la musique) in Le Mans (France). He came with us to Kinshasa to help us start the workshop and also to teach other students besides Augustin in some basic repair techniques. This initiation course serves to give an feeling of the work, not really to learn it. Repairing wind instruments is too complicated to be taught in only one week time.
If we can find new ways to get students to Europe, we might in the future invite the best for another internship of 3 months.
06-07-2008
Kinshasa: repairing Steinway piano
This last week piano-expert Pol De Winter checked all the five pianos which Music Fund donated to the Institut National des Arts to see whether nothing happened to them during the transportation between Belgium and Kinshasa. He also continued to work on 3 pianos which the school already possessed and succeeded to make them playable again: a baby-grand iBach piano (donated some years ago by the ONG Enfants de l'Etoile), a baby-grand Yamaha piano, and last but not least the full grand Steinway piano which was donated to the school in the seventies by the King and Queen of Belgium.
© Pol De Winter repairing parts of the Steinway piano, together with his student Serge Tabu
05-07-2008
Kinshasa: micro-credit for guitar-workshop Almaz
Today I went back to the guitar workshop Almaz (of Maurice MAZANZA), together with Jérôme Roux (economic and commercial adviser, Belgian Embassy) and Louis-Odillon Alaguillaume (vice-general director of ProCredit Bank Congo), whom I had told about Almaz and they were interested to meet Mr Mazanza. Music Fund and Mr Mazanza will be collaborating in the context of our training programme for instrument technicians at the Institut National des Arts in Kinshasa later this year or the beginning of next year.
The ProCredit Bank is specialised in giving micro-credits to people in developing countries who want to start up or develop their businesses. I thought that the situation Mr Mazanza is now in, is a good example of someone who with some extra cash could solve some of his problems and develop his business again.
And that is indeed what will happen, because ProCredit Bank is very interested to include his business as one of the projects it wants to give micro-credits to. Mr Mazanza will be able to solve his electricity problem as well as start buying some advance stocks and finish guitars in advance of orders.
© Mr Maurice Mazanza, founder and owner of the guitar-workshop Almaz (= Atelier du Luthier MAZanza)
So good that we have also in this case been able to be 'go-between'. It is so good that one of the consequences of our partnerships is that we are in a position to help some of our partners develop their businesses or schools, thanks to the creation of local financing through something like the "AMIS de l'INA" (friends of INA) or now this example of a small business which gets a micro-credit thanks to our intervention.
I am more and more convinced that we have to find other complementary ways to develop this work, including besides governmental subsidies and aid also the intervention of local private financing as well as credits given to commercial value. Real development cannot be dependent of aid. Aid can give a push into the right direction, but leaves one in the uncomfortable north-south relationship of those who have and those who receive. To break this awkward and unproductive relationship, I want Music Fund to play a role in helping our partners to find local private financing and - better even - micro-credits. It will help them strenghten seriously their position, not only in the partnership they have with us. The final aim is not to stay in these partnerships forever, quite the contrary. Aid makes people dependent.
In places like Kinshasa or Maputo, the main question should be to what extend our interventions can create job opportunities and economic development of the local businesses and institutions we work with in the field of music. This means that Music Fund will more and more have to become interested and knowledgeable about markets, private financing and credit facilities, management of businesses, developing business and trade involving businesses in Europe as well as locally.
04-07-2008
Kinshasa: guitars Socklo
Together with musician Jupiter, I visited the amazing guitar workshop of Socklo in Lembas (cité of Kinshasa). Jupiter's musicians love Socklo's guitars, and I can understand this. They are original in their conception, and have a special sound.
Socklo has two people working with him and all the parts are handmade. They are making all parts of the guitars themselves, also the strings: out of iron and copper strings, recuperated from bicycle- and engines-parts.
I invited Socklo to consider to join us at the Institut National des Arts (INA) when we come back in about six months or so to give an initiation course in repairing guitars, together with Els Jageneau, expert and teacher in guitar construction at ILSA (International Lutherie School Antwerpen). He seems interested to join us then.
Kinshasa: guitar-workshop Almaz
Today I visited the guitarre construction workshop Almaz in Bandal (cité of Kinshasa).
At one time he had up to twenty people working in his workshop, but due to an electricity cut of already eleven (11) months he is for the moment working in very difficult circomstances. None of his machines function and they are therefor obliged to do and make everything by hand. This slows down their production enormously. He can now produce only about 20 guitarres per month.
We have discussed together about the possibility of a collaboration. I have explained him the intention of Music Fund to soon come back to Kinshasa with a Belgian expert in guitarre construction (Mrs Els Jageneau, professor at ILSA, the International Lutherie School Antwerpen), and that we would very much like to invite him as well - as the other guitarre maker from Kinshasa, Socklo - to join us at the Institut National des Arts (INA) to share his experience in the context of a training session of a week or so. After this experience, we can then see how we could extend our collaboration to also include his work in his own workshop. Almaz has responded positively to this invitation.
Here is my son Max, happily playing an Almaz guitarre, which I bought him for his 20th birthday:
03-07-2008
Kinshasa - creation of "AMIS de l'INA"
Today Thursday was an important day for the partnership which we started to develop between the Institut National des Arts (INA) and Music Fund. Together with the president of the FEC (Fédération des Entreprises Congolaises), Mr Albert Yuma, we convened a meeting of some representatives of Congolese and European private compagnies at the residence of the Ambassador of Belgium, Mr Johan Swinnen. At this meeting-cocktail, the DG of INA, Lema Kusa, and myself presented our partnership and asked the representatives of industry to create an association of friends of the school, in order to create a fund allowing the school to fully play its role as partner in this partnership, as well as to give support to the further development of the school.
Towards the end of this meeting, Mr Albert Yuma took the floor and promissed everyone present that he would convene another and larger meeting at the FEC in September, which would then see the creation of this association, called "AMIS de l'INA".
This is a major development in our work here and we are very proud to have been intermediate to make this happen.
© with my friend and partner, Lema Kusa, the DG of the Institut National des Arts
01-07-2008
Kinshasa - first days
I arrived in Kinshasa last Saturday 28th June together with instrument experts Pol De Winter (pianos) and Pierre Helou (wind instruments), as well as with Augustin Kadiata, who followed a 3 month internship as technician to repair wind instruments in the workshop of Yves Treuttens near Brussels, and is now preparing himself to work in the repair workshop which Music Fund is opening the coming week at and in collaboration with the Institut National des Arts (INA) in Kinshasa.
The next day we spent moving the music instruments of our donation to the INA. Thanks to the support of the Groupe Sucriere we could move all the pianos (5) and all the other instruments from a warehouse at the Procure Saint-Anne towards the music school, all together the biggest amount Music Fund has ever donated to a music school.
The instruments were given to us by many private people (especially from Belgium and France) and some by the Flemish Philharmonic Orchestra. We also included a dance-floor given to the dance department of the INA by the Royal Flemish Ballet. All this was transported from Antwerp to Kinshasa by boat thanks to the support of Wereldmissiehulp, a catholic organisation working worldwide for the missionaries. Thanks to the intervention of the Embassy of the Ordre de Malte in Kinshasa, we were able to get this special cargo into the city without having to worry too much about the complexity of transfering cargo between the harbour of Mattadi and Kinshasa. We have many friends helping us, also here in the Democratic Republic of Congo !
Monday was a day off for Pol, Pierre and me. The 30th June is the day of independence of Congo. We made a long walk in the city and then spend many hours together with our friends Flory Fraipont and Jean-Luc Mouzon, both working for the Belgian Technical Cooperation (BTC).
Tuesday Kinshasa is all awake again and so are we ! In the afternoon we organise a ceremony during which we - in the presence of Johan Swinnen, Ambassador of Belgium - transfer the donation of music instruments to our partner, the INA, as well as officially open the repair workshop in the music school.
We expect the atelier to start functioning immediately and will spend the rest of our stay installing it, as well as teaching more members of the INA staff and/or students in repair techniques, so that they can take care of their own instruments, as well as repair instruments from musicians from outside the school. I expect and hope that this repair workshop will be the motor for our project the coming years, as it will create jobs, as well as make sure that the music instruments in Kinshasa can be repaired and kept in good condition.
Doing this work is strengthening the quality of music education and music performances in Kinshasa.
A lot of what we are doing in Kinshasa is being filmed by Antenne A, one of the largest commercial television stations in the city. They are making a day-to-day journal of our project, which we hope could later on be developed into a full-fletched documentary on this special partnership between INA in Kinshasa and Music Fund in Brussels.
