Accountability, transparency, change. Njabulo Madlala.
The South African baritone has travelled far. This interview is not about ‘arrival’ but the ongoing journey towards true equity in his chosen profession.
Who are you?
Wow, what a question. I didn’t see that coming. How do I answer this question? Who am I? Can we have a come back to that question?
It is not usually the first question I get and when it is posed, the first thing that comes to mind to say is “I am a singer.” But who is just a singer? This pandemic has done a lot to help bring some clarity. It’s been a tough period and lots of lessons learned. I have used the time during this pandemic to reflect and celebrate life beyond just being a singer. I have license now I didn’t feel I had before the pandemic. To finally drop the modesty and lift the curtain to being a lot more than a singer. A singer is just the beginning and a small part of who I am. I’ll try and answer this question as we go along if you'll allow me.
Why do you do what you do?
Context is important. I was born in Durban, South Africa, a township called Inanda. It's north of Durban, about 30 minutes outside of the city. Only black people live there. It forms part of the many South African townships set up by the white regime, the apartheid government, to separate white people from mixing and living together with black people. Before you get to Inanda you pass Phoenix. Phoenix is a township created for the Indian community. It’s slightly better and closer to the city but away from the white community. They might have been seen by the government to be superior to black people and, although not good enough to co-exist within a white community, they somehow enjoyed slightly better living conditions.
I was born in a single parent family. My mother was a child. Pregnant at 17, gave birth alone in a hospital on 27 January 1982 after four days in labour. She turned 18 a few days later on 5 February. It was her first boyfriend and her first sexual encounter. I was mostly raised by my grandmother, the extended family members and the community. No neighbour doesn’t tell a story of having to babysit me at one point or another. My mother, her name is Joyce. We grew up together and she did the best she could. It wasn’t easy for her. After all, my arrival had caused her to drop out of school and be isolated.
The township houses provided by the government were small, two small bedrooms, a kitchen and living/dining room area. We had to share this with my grandmother whose house it was, two aunts, their children, my uncle and some extended family members who came to visit from time to time. When it was time to sleep at night, there were people everywhere. There were people in the two bedrooms, the living room floor and the kitchen floor.
My grandmother kept the house going. She was the only one that had a job, as a domestic worker for a white family in town and later as a school cleaner when that family moved abroad. We all survived on the little she earned. Later, my mother would get a job working as a machinist for a big Indian owned company, producing clothes for export. She didn’t earn very much and they were thoroughly exploited. You could tell when she came home beyond exhausted. We grew up on nothing but had to make things work. As far as I can remember, I was very aware of the desperately crazy environment I was growing up in. Not only the poverty but the crime, hopelessness, the killings of our people whose voices had to be shut down when they challenged the racist and oppressive government. I remember the many nights when the soldiers would break down doors in the middle of the night and turn the entire house upside down searching for people and weapons. My grandmother belonged to the ANC and was often arrested for not disclosing information the police needed about certain members of our community. You didn’t do that.
Right from the beginning I was trying to find a way out of that chaos. I knew as a very small boy, that if I didn’t get out of that place I would end up dead. It would be drugs, crime, jail or from the anger of my situation and the system of oppression. Seeing signs in town that read “Europeans only” or “Africans only” did not help. One meal a day was my daily reminder of how grave things were, of course there were days that went by without a meal. I had to get out. Singing.
I got involved with the school choir and slowly found my voice. It became my escape for an hour or so a day. I had a teacher that loved opera and I got to hear it early. My grandmother used to collect whatever her employers threw out of their house and bring it home. Often she brought back tapes that had opera on them. When all adults were out of the house, I would play the tapes and sing along. That is how I found my voice and knew there was something there.
A long story I know, but I hope that explains why I do what I do. I sing and each year for the past 10 years, I organise and put on opera masterclasses and a singing competition in South Africa to help young people out there born in similar circumstances as I was. I don’t sing only because I love it and I don’t help them only because they are talented. I have never sung just for the fun of it. I long for that day. I hope you understand, I do love it, I have fun doing it, I mean, I enjoy it a lot. But - I had to do it.
I didn’t pursue singing because of talent or because of a keen parent with spare cash for singing lessons. I discovered my voice privately and it quickly rescued me. I understood that I had something acceptable enough to get some work to help my family and improve my life. I was never encouraged by anyone to do it. There were more talented children around. But I had to do it. My instinct told me that this was the one thing I had that could remove me from the environment. I ask myself why I still sing. It is my life now and of course now I am a poor artist in London with mouths to feed. But that is different. I have choices and education behind me to do other things. I am no longer trying to escape. Maybe I belong here. I don’t know.
My first job at sixteen, singing in the chorus of an opera came at a breaking point. Both my grandmother and mother had lost their jobs and there really was nothing. No water, no electricity, no food…. nothing. I used every penny I earned from that job to help my family. They had done what they could to get me to sixteen. I was never not going to look out for them. I still do.
Growing up in a community like mine makes one appreciate community. We are all in the same boat there. When we went to bed without any food, it was because our neighbours didn’t have anything to eat too. If they had food, no matter how little, they would share. We were raised that way.
When I turned eighteen my chorus job toured to London and while I was here, I visited the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and asked to be heard. Robin Bowman, head of voice heard me the very day I walked in unannounced. A more formal audition was set for two weeks later and I was awarded a full scholarship to study on the undergraduate course. Subsequently on the postgraduate course and finally on the opera course. Throughout that time, I thought of colleagues I had left behind, talented but stuck in terrible conditions. I decided then that I was always going to do the work I do to this day.
As a South African, what is it like being part of a Porgy and Bess cast?
The quick answer is that I love the experience of being in Porgy and Bess. It’s usually my chance to make a living, be on stage and experience the thrill of being an opera singer. Outside of Porgy, there is little else going on for a black singer apart from about five of us who do get to sing standard repertoire. At least when Porgy is performing I feel alive. I feel useful and I love that. With all its imperfections, it has made it possible for me to feed my child when it comes around. I have one coming up. It’s the only job I have this year. So for me, it’s thank God for Porgy.
Are you political enough to want things to change in opera? To help it to change?
If the question you are asking is - am I political enough to say that there's racism in opera then the answer is yes. I’m political enough to say, without a doubt, that - I know - opera is racist here. All is not well in the operatic world. Especially not for black artists. We all know that. So why then would I encourage young black singers to get into opera knowing what I know now? Opera has given me a lot. It helped get me out of a very dangerous place. Almost all the singers I help through my competition and masterclass project come from exactly the same situation. If singing opera can do the same for them as it has done for me, I'll sleep better at night. If they become stars, then great, they’ll make big bucks and all will live happily ever after. But if they don’t, at least they will have been able to change their lives somewhat. I am not a star but I am alive, I make ends meet and have a chance in life.
However, I can't say to any of them, not even one, that they'll be big stars based simply on their talent. It looks to me like it’s not really about talent and not even about hard work for black singers. There's another hurdle to be dealt with and they’ll have to figure out how to get around and make things work for them. It is doable. It will take time. With a bit more appreciation of challenges, they will be more resilient and find ways to make it work as we are doing. They'll need to focus and believe that we can overcome, that we will overcome, we will find a way.
As a student at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama I was sponsored by the philanthropist and arts benefactor Sir Peter Moores under his foundation, which had a scholarship for singers like me. British singer Sarah Walker played a major role to make this possible for me. I am forever grateful to her. She helped not only me but countless other singers get this support.
As a Sir Peter Moores scholar, one could attend as much opera as one wanted with the main opera companies in this country for free. The foundation paid for the tickets. This extended to me even beyond my studies. I went to the opera for ten years and I never saw anyone that looked like me on stage. Now, I'm not gullible enough to be persuaded that that was just a coincidence. Or that in ten years, there was not a good enough black singer to appear in at least one opera I saw, in all that time, at least in the chorus.
Accountability and transparency is going to be important. Until then we can have as many conversations as we want to have, opera companies and festival directors and producers can continue to do the same and claim lack of black talent, itself a racist and deeply hurtful statement. To claim that in ten years of seeing opera and not seeing anyone that looks like me on stage, is out of a lack of talent, is devastating. But then we know now after all these years in the field that that is not true, so we keep moving forward and finding new ways! I stopped going to the opera. It became too much to be the only black person in the audience and see not one that looks like me anywhere on stage or in the pit. The message this was sending to me was not what I was ready to accept. I was a young aspiring singer after all.
A lot more accountability and receipts would be needed to persuade me that race is not an issue. A lot more needs to be done. It involves having us on board and not shutting the door on those who speak out about these issues. There's a real danger faced by people who speak out. How can we not speak with everything we have seen and endured? That is simply impossible for some of us.
Is there a want? A desire? Something at the end of the tunnel?
If black children in the poorest parts of Africa like where I came from, can find opera, connect with it, use it to change their lives like I did, then a black child in Britain should be able to do so too. We should be ashamed that this is not happening in a first world country. It doesn’t have to take black African opera singers who seem to be dominating the opera space to prove that it is possible. If you can find a black child in a township in South Africa, in absolute squalor and poverty, why is it impossible to achieve in Britain?
The status quo is no longer an acceptable position. Explaining lack of diversity by saying there is lack of talent should be strongly rejected. Collaborations between opera companies and singers of colour is going to be very important. Plenty of them are waiting to be useful. Failure to hire them in roles should not also translate into failure to invite them around the table. How many are on boards of opera companies today? How many lead projects in schools with opera companies inspiring the younger generation? How many are part of the decision making? Apart from the one time when I sang for the Sir Peter Moores Foundation and walked in to find a black woman on the panel (Allyson Devenish), I am yet to experience that again in all these years doing auditions. I am yet to see black directors, conductors, artist managers and the list goes on. Don’t merely use a few in the field to show that something is being done, go further and use singers of colour to do the real work and in a few years we may begin to see results. If this can happen one day we will see a much more diverse community.
Who are you?
I hate injustice. I hate racism with every inch of my existence. I am a father and I worry about my child. He is a mixed race child and growing up in this world. I am a son, I am a brother, I am a friend and hopefully through my work, I am a role model to some. I am here to make a difference and stand for what is good. Whatever that takes. I do not want to be an old angry, resentful black man. I’ll do whatever I can to contribute to the change I want to see.
The future.