Stardom is beckoning Kutlwano Masote, the first black person to be employed as a full member of the NSO, writes John Matshikiza
You don’t have to wear a zebra-skin suit and drive a zebra-striped BMW to make classical music in the township, although some people say it helps. The Soweto String Quartet, for example, have made an international killing through the concept.
But there are other people also banging out classical music on the other side of the tracks, and a lot of them are not particularly committed to the ersatz sound that has drifted the Soweto String Quartet away from Classic FM territory and into the pop charts. A lot of them are actually taking serious music seriously.
Kutlwano Masote is the first black person to be employed as a full member of South Africa’s National Symphony Orchestra (NSO), occupying the position of “tutti cello” – which means he is not yet a principal cellist, but plays an important role in adding to the texture provided by the cello section. He is quietly working his way through the symphonic hierarchy, and shows every sign of being headed for distinction.
Masote spent his early childhood in Soweto. He was relatively privileged in having parents who were both passionately involved in serious music -as members of the Ionian Music Society and various choral groups.
His father, Michael, was a leading figure in the development of choral and classical music since the 1950s. He is a trained violinist, and, together with his wife, Sheila, continues to administer the Soweto Symphony Orchestra and the African Cultural Organisation of South Africa – successor to the Johannesburg Bantu Music Festival, the organisation that kept serious music among black people alive through dark and difficult years.
Kutlwano Masote was thus immersed in music “from the womb”, and most of this was classical – both choral and instrumental. His father started teaching him violin when he was 11 years old, and when he chose to switch to the cello two years later, his instruction was taken on by Peta-Anne Holdcroft, who is now a colleague in the string section of the NSO.
Masote went to school at the struggle- conscious St Barnabas College in Bosmont, and then went on to the very privileged St John’s College in Houghton. St John’s, with its tiny 10% complement of black schoolboys, gave him the rigorous musical environment that set him on the path to professionalism.
“It was almost like being in the army,” he says wryly, but he didn’t regret a minute of it. The issue was not that he was a black boy playing classical music, but that he was a boy playing classical music at all. “Everyone played rugby. I played the cello.” He was just different.
His seriousness about his music quickly enabled him to overcome this potential pariah status. “If you’re serious about what you’re doing, people come to respect you,” he says. And indeed, once other students had overcome their prejudice against his musical absorption, he made friends who have stayed true to this day.
Apart from his parents, he had support for this privileged, “Eurocentric” pursuit from another source in his childhood. His grandfather, the late Zeph Mothopeng, long- term president of the Pan Africanist Congress, was delighted that Masote had access to this excellence at St John’s. Did this appear to conflict with his grandfather’s revolutionary politics?
“I hardly knew my grandfather’s politics,” says Masote, “because he was away in prison all the time.” He is referring to Mothopeng’s lengthy stay on Robben Island. “All I know is that he was a wonderful, selfless man, who had a good vision for his people. He was happy for me in the choice I had made.”
After school Masote did a licentiate of music at the University of the Witwatersrand, specialising in playing and teaching.
“At that time,” he says, “imagining a career as a player in the NSO just didn’t seem realistic.” The NSO in the mid-90s still seemed a hopelessly distant bastion of Eurocentric culture. “After I graduated in 1996, the only thing I could imagine doing was going overseas to continue my studies.”
His big break came as he was about to graduate. “Lord [Yehudi] Menuhin was visiting South Africa at the time, and mentioned to members of the Soweto String Quartet that he would like to meet gifted young string players. They took me along to meet him at The Carlton hotel, and after I’d played for him for about two minutes, he stopped me and told me I had been very well taught.”
A week after that meeting, Menuhin wrote to Masote personally to advise him that he had made arrangements for Masote to make an exploratory visit to his prestigious Menuhin Academy at Blonay in Switzerland. During that three-week adventure, Masote played for the leading teachers and got a sense of the school. The chemistry seemed to be right on all sides, and the young man was off on the next step of his charmed career.
He spent three years in Switzerland – missing home, freezing in winter and enduring the interminable rain in the summer. But he gained invaluable knowledge from some of the world’s best teachers. And he grew up.
“It was a different world in every imaginable way,” he says. “Here we were, students from all over the world, living and learning in an English-speaking academy situated in a French-speaking town in deepest Switzerland. I was the only black student. It was hard for me to adjust to it all. But in a way I was more privileged than many of the others, the Russians, for example, who had to learn English from scratch to be able to keep up.
“Climate actually does influence the way people are. At home, in spite of many problems, people smile a lot. There it was like being in a retirement home, with a few young people around to relieve the gloom.
“My time there made me think a lot about my life here at home,” he continues. “It’s good to get out of familiar surroundings in order to find yourself.”
Having graduated from the Menuhin Academy, he had no hesitation about returning to South Africa to continue with his growing career.
He seems to have a musician’s perfect sense of timing. “Somehow, I seem to fall on the right opportunities at the right times.” This time, opportunity came in the form of an invitation to join the NSO, who could hardly be unaware of his now formidable credentials. He rehearses and plays with the orchestra on a regular basis, does recitals with smaller groups, and teaches at the academy run by his parents in Soweto.
Masote also has his own programme on Classic FM, and practises as much as his busy schedule will allow. He would also like to establish a chamber music festival, particularly to encourage appreciation among young black people for the kind of music he plays.
Does he have any interest in other kinds of music – kwaito, for example?
“You can’t avoid it, because kwaito culture is reflective of what South African youth is about right now. So I hear a lot of kwaito, but I wouldn’t actually go out and buy a kwaito CD myself. I like Vusi Mahlasela’s music, and Tu Nokwe’s. But I tend to stay away from music that is purely commercial – here today, gone tomorrow.”
It might be a little strange being the only black face in a white symphony orchestra in Africa, generally playing to a white audience. “There are usually only two black faces in the audience when we play,” he says, “and they’re my parents!”
But he’s lived with that anomaly all his life, and he feels a strong sense of belonging as a member of the NSO.
His ambition, he says, is not necessarily to rush for a star position in the NSO, but “just to keep on playing!” Nevertheless, with his level of dedication and talent, stardom is surely already beckoning Masote.
Kutlwano Masote will be performing and teaching with members of the visiting Sydney Conservatoire Orchestra in a special workshop/ concert to be held in Soweto at the Baragwanath/Chris Hani Nursing College Auditorium at 15h00 on Saturday September 18