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| Entertainment |
| Society: Mjura talks about Malawi music |
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by
Edward Nyirenda, 15 July 2006
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05:21:41
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The name Mjura may not mean anything to most of today’s generation but to those who have followed the country’s music, it tells a story. Yes, a story of one of the country’s great choral composers.
Though rarely recognised, Mjura Mkandawire, born Clement Vernon William Mjura Mkandawire, is a force to reckon with in the country’s music industry. He is the man who managed MBC Band in the 1960s after joining the corporation in 1964. As a composer, eight of his choral compositions were published by the Choral Workshop Publications, an outgrowth of a Choral Workshop of Fine and Performing Arts at Chancellor College, in 1990. Besides, Mjura has taught music since 1982 at Blantyre Teachers College and Phwezi Secondary School before retiring in 1994.
Recently, he was part of a Southern African team chosen to compose an anthem for the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) region.
And at 80, the grey-haired man is still alive and kicking and very much interested in the subject he knows best—music. Mind you, not just any music, but the classical brand.
“You see my boy, music is a universal language,” he says with a chuckle as we sit on the veranda of his plateau house at Livingstonia. “It is a language through which a composer speaks to the listener.”
Not surprisingly, during our first meeting recently, Mjura took me through a music journey—expressing his worries over Malawi music and explaining about his project where he is compiling a song book.
How does he look at Malawian music?
“It appears Malawians don’t know what music is. They have taken singing as music and that’s a problem because singing is just a component of music,” says the man who retired from MBC in 1981 as principal programme producer.
But get him right, he says. He does not mean Malawi music is trash, only that our musicians are neglecting several aspects of music by concentrating on singing alone. He argues that lyrics and words in themselves are not music, they only utter to a tune.
“Music is just like English, a language which you have to read and write and needs to have sound, shape and sense of meaning. In this language, chords are the words and the melody, the ideas which move us along from one chord to the next. The chords joined together make phrases and sentences. That’s the pattern that is lacking,” hints Mjura.
He adds: “One will always speak broken English if he hasn’t studied its grammar. That’s the case too with music. You can’t play good music if you haven’t studied its grammar.”
His greatest worry though concerns choirs.
“Most of our choirs concentrate on dancing but they don’t harmonise their melody. What they need is a good vocal sound production and harmony instead of stylish dancing steps. And you have to go to a music school to study harmony,” advises Mjura, adding that it is wrong to call a group of less than 18 members a choir.
Mjura, who is also teaching some youths in his home area how to read music at no fee, says most youths today are not interested in learning music, preferring to do it [music] their own way.
“It is unfortunate that they don’t want somebody to teach them how to go about with music,” lamented the music tutor who participated in the 1988-1990 panel to develop a Malawi primary school teacher’s syllabus in music.
The long time composer bemoans lack of deliberate policy to teach music in schools, despite the presence of music books and teachers. He says there has not been commitment at the highest level to incorporate music lessons in the syllabi.
“Music should be taught in schools and it would be good for the country if children are taught how to read music from an early stage. We would then have musicians who would sing beautifully by just reading lyrics. It’s unfortunate only three if not four schools the whole country are teaching music,” he says.
Currently, Mjura is still composing and is in the process of sending manuscripts for the publication of his second book, Malawi Choral Compositions with Helpful Hints for Teachers of Music in Malawi’s Primary and Secondary Schools, in England.
“I want to help those interested in music,” says Mjura who is also studying towards a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music with the University of South Africa.
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