know?
—Well, for instance, about the foundation of the school, the courses on offer, costs, standards.
He nods thoughtfully, then gets up again, and waddles across the room to the cabinet. He pulls out a small stack of papers.
—These brochures can fill you in on some details. The school was founded in 1989, and we have grown a lot in the past few years.
—How is the school funded?
—Through school fees and by private donors.
Then he adds, jovially:
—You know, a rich guy like yourself can just give us one million naira. Just like that.
He makes a flicking motion with his hand. I turn to the young lady and ask if she is a student. She says she is a studentin the vocal program, a soprano. Her manner is sniffy. I ask what kind of music she specializes in.
—Oh, you know, classical and jazz and stuff. I’ll be singing in the fund-raiser next week with the MUSON Orchestra.
—Who is in the orchestra?
—It’s mostly faculty members of the MUSON School.
She has a distracted, birdlike manner. But that’s the extent of my conversation with her. She sits there after that, watching us talk. The receptionist says:
—Depending on what you want, you can have either an expatriate or local teacher.
I raise an eyebrow.
—What’s the difference?
—Cost. The expatriate teachers cost much more.
I check the fee schedule in the brochure he gave me. What he says is true. It is a sour note. What they are saying is that even a Nigerian teacher who studied at, say, the Peabody Institute or the Royal Academy would be paid at a much lower rate than any white piano teacher.
—But the most important thing, which we emphasize to all incoming students, is that you must own the instrument you wish to learn. We try to be clear about this, but people still act confused. If you want to learn piano, you must have a piano at home. If you want to learn cello, you must own a cello. Flute, trumpet, whatever your instrument is, you must own it.
—Voice?
He chuckles. They have set the bar quite high. Owning a piano, even in the West, is no easy thing. In Nigeria, it is prohibitively expensive for all but the most moneyed. Yet, I can see immediately how complicated it would be to have a rental system in Nigeria, a country in which credit facilities are not well established, and most things, including cars and houses, are still paid for in cash. On the other hand, students could not be compelled to come to the school to practice four or five days a week, the minimum that would be needed to gain proficiency on an instrument. The transportation situation would make that too burdensome. What this means is that, for now, serious musical instruction in Lagos is available only to the wealthiest and most dedicated Nigerians.
Yet, it is better than nothing. As demand and supply both increase, prices will be adjusted. Things will become more egalitarian, the way they already are with private secondary schools. The MUSON School already represents a great leap forward: nothing of this kind was available when I was a high school student. I did not discover my passion for music until I went to America. A younger set of Nigerians might not have to rely on going overseas to develop this area of interest.
The school, and the bold programming of its concert halls, cheers me greatly. To the extent that places like the National Museum kill my desire to live in the country, institutions like the MUSON Centre revive that will. It is important for a people to have something that is theirs,something to be proud of, and for such institutions to have a host of supporters. And it is vital, at the same time, to have a meaningful forum for interacting with the world. So that Molière’s work can appear onstage in Lagos, as Soyinka’s appears in London. So that what people in one part of the world think of as uniquely theirs takes its rightful place as a part of universal culture.
Art can do that. Literature, music, visual arts, theater, film. The most
—Well, for instance, about the foundation of the school, the courses on offer, costs, standards.
He nods thoughtfully, then gets up again, and waddles across the room to the cabinet. He pulls out a small stack of papers.
—These brochures can fill you in on some details. The school was founded in 1989, and we have grown a lot in the past few years.
—How is the school funded?
—Through school fees and by private donors.
Then he adds, jovially:
—You know, a rich guy like yourself can just give us one million naira. Just like that.
He makes a flicking motion with his hand. I turn to the young lady and ask if she is a student. She says she is a studentin the vocal program, a soprano. Her manner is sniffy. I ask what kind of music she specializes in.
—Oh, you know, classical and jazz and stuff. I’ll be singing in the fund-raiser next week with the MUSON Orchestra.
—Who is in the orchestra?
—It’s mostly faculty members of the MUSON School.
She has a distracted, birdlike manner. But that’s the extent of my conversation with her. She sits there after that, watching us talk. The receptionist says:
—Depending on what you want, you can have either an expatriate or local teacher.
I raise an eyebrow.
—What’s the difference?
—Cost. The expatriate teachers cost much more.
I check the fee schedule in the brochure he gave me. What he says is true. It is a sour note. What they are saying is that even a Nigerian teacher who studied at, say, the Peabody Institute or the Royal Academy would be paid at a much lower rate than any white piano teacher.
—But the most important thing, which we emphasize to all incoming students, is that you must own the instrument you wish to learn. We try to be clear about this, but people still act confused. If you want to learn piano, you must have a piano at home. If you want to learn cello, you must own a cello. Flute, trumpet, whatever your instrument is, you must own it.
—Voice?
He chuckles. They have set the bar quite high. Owning a piano, even in the West, is no easy thing. In Nigeria, it is prohibitively expensive for all but the most moneyed. Yet, I can see immediately how complicated it would be to have a rental system in Nigeria, a country in which credit facilities are not well established, and most things, including cars and houses, are still paid for in cash. On the other hand, students could not be compelled to come to the school to practice four or five days a week, the minimum that would be needed to gain proficiency on an instrument. The transportation situation would make that too burdensome. What this means is that, for now, serious musical instruction in Lagos is available only to the wealthiest and most dedicated Nigerians.
Yet, it is better than nothing. As demand and supply both increase, prices will be adjusted. Things will become more egalitarian, the way they already are with private secondary schools. The MUSON School already represents a great leap forward: nothing of this kind was available when I was a high school student. I did not discover my passion for music until I went to America. A younger set of Nigerians might not have to rely on going overseas to develop this area of interest.
The school, and the bold programming of its concert halls, cheers me greatly. To the extent that places like the National Museum kill my desire to live in the country, institutions like the MUSON Centre revive that will. It is important for a people to have something that is theirs,something to be proud of, and for such institutions to have a host of supporters. And it is vital, at the same time, to have a meaningful forum for interacting with the world. So that Molière’s work can appear onstage in Lagos, as Soyinka’s appears in London. So that what people in one part of the world think of as uniquely theirs takes its rightful place as a part of universal culture.
Art can do that. Literature, music, visual arts, theater, film. The most
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