Is the death of the NSO the symptom of a deeper malaise in South Africa: the demise of arts and culture? Belinda Beresford reports
The death rattle of the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) began with the triumphant blast of the national anthem at the start of the second-last performance the orchestra is ever to give.
It is not only the NSO which faces closure. The Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra says it is only “OK” for funding until March; the Windybrow Centre for the Arts has announced it may close in the same month, and the Market Theatre is also facing demise, according to artistic director John Kani.
But the end of the NSO could prove to be the reality-check needed by all participants in the arts in South Africa.
The government is simply not providing enough funding to keep all the arts in business, and corporate sponsorship and ticket sales are not sufficient to fill the gap.
The NSO has closed because it has run out of money – having survived on a month-by- month basis, it didn’t have the funds to start this year’s symphony season. In December NSO management had to tell players they possibly would not get a full month’s salary, although the money was eventually found. The constant struggle for survival has taken its toll: orchestra members admit the constant uncertainty has had a debilitating effect on playing standards.
Without government funding, and with limited private sector help, the orchestra has struggled to survive since it was orphaned by the SABC in 1997. It has been asking for R10-million to continue for another year. Unfortunately, the entire budget for the National Arts Council, which funds cultural activities in South Africa, is only R25-million.
Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology Ben Ngubane says his department cannot simply “pull R10-million out of a hat”.
In an interview this week, Kani called for the government to nurture culture. “The government must remember that while people need housing and education and jobs, we are also a people with a culture, a history, a language, an art that we are proud of.”
Too white, too European and too elitest appear to be the criticisms most often levelled at South Africa’s symphony orchestras.
“A lot of people say it is really European but so is soccer. That is something that we have absorbed into our culture with no problems,” countered Shadrack Bokaba. The NSO announced its closure the day before the 27-year-old violinist was due to audition for a position. If he had been successful he would have been the first black violinist – and the third black permanent member – of the orchestra. As a youngster growing up in financially straitened circumstances near GaRankuwa, Bokaba first started music at the age of 12 under the stimulus of the Pact outreach programme.
The closure of the NSO almost certainly dooms its outreach programme, under which musicians teach children and music teachers, as well as introducing wider audiences to classical music. The fruits of such musical education programmes are becoming visible. Playing his first public performance as a member of the NSO on Wednesday was Alex Hitzeroth, an 18-year- old trombonist from the Eastern Cape. The day he joined as the orchestra’s second black player, he was retrenched.
Black musicians acknowledge the orchestras are changing: “I’m a competent cellist, I’m not a token darkie,” said Kutlwano Masota, scion of a family of prominent classical musicians.
Transformation notwithstanding, it has to be asked whether the NSO has done enough to ensure its survival is considered vital in a country where there are three other major orchestras.
Ngubane says his department is willing to talk with the NSO and its fellows around the country, but that the orchestras themselves have not been sufficiently proactive in coming up with integrated and co-operative plans for their survival.
Ngubane said when approached by the NSO management late last year for funding, he had asked that they return with a master plan for co-operation with other orchestras to cut costs and consolidate resources. The response was “totally unsatisfactory”. “Somehow I don’t think these orchestras are interested in talking to each other. They each want to go their own way,” he said.
The government is looking to rationalise the four existing orchestras into one national body with a national training scheme. While the orchestras resist this suggestion, arguing that it will be unwieldy and more expensive, they have so far failed to come up with alternative suggestions. A meeting in Durban of all four orchestras this week may provide results.
Players themselves are critical about the nature of the orchestra. Coming from a civil service situation at the SABC, where life was “too comfortable”, the orchestra failed to evolve, said one violin player. There needs to be recognition that music is an industry, and the orchestra should be run as a business with a full-time professional board, and a long-term strategy plan to raise its profile and become more accessible – musically and physically – to a wider range of South Africans.
Similar criticisms have been voiced by arts funders in the corporate world. The orchestra is seen as being too low profile with too limited an audience.
The NSO’s very desperation and independence from government may have worked against it. Funders also don’t want to be associated with something that teeters on the edge of closure, and that appears to fail to attract public sector approval.
The orchestra members say they are willing to be flexible to save their institution. In a speech read before their performance, the orchestra said “… the orchestra members appreciate the shortage of money to fund its operations. They believe that all avenues have not yet been explored. They are therefore not prepared to concede defeat.”
The orchestra’s management is still trying to save it, including discussing a funding lifeline from the city council in return for moving back to the city hall and helping the regeneration of the CBD.
Olive Schreiner once said South Africans (read white) were a nation of lower-middle- class philistines. The audience at the first free concert, arranged by musicians this week to say goodbye to their supporters, was only 90% full. And yet orchestra members from around the country say that when they travel to disadvantaged areas the venues are packed.
If Johannesburgers can’t manage a full house for a concert, especially a free one with such poignance – do they deserve to have their own orchestra? Possibly not, but the residents of Soweto and Eldorado Park might.