My name is Babazile Mahlangu
Just when I think this trip can’t be any more incredible, along comes a day like today. We left at 6am to go to the Theo Twala Primary School in Kwa-thema, outside of Johnannesburg, planning to spend from 7am-9am performing for the kids and visiting the classes. We stayed for four hours.
In October, I directed a benefit concert for BSA at Symphony Space in New York. Theo Twala sent us some letters written in 2006 by their 6th grade class. For the concert, I asked ten composers to use the letters as inspiration and create an original song written specifically for the event. Some of the composers used the letters as a basis for an idea; others used the children’s words verbatim. One of the songs was called, “Babazile Mahlangu,” in which Jeremy Schonfeld used that girl’s words almost exactly as she had written them on the page. Another song, “Sibusiso,” was written by Michael John LaChiusa, who named his piece for the boy whose letter he had chosen to set to music. On the ride to the school this morning, I announced to everyone that I was obsessed with finding Babazile and Sibusiso and couldn’t wait to meet them.
When we got there the headmaster led us into the outside courtyard to find more than 300 kids waiting for us. Even though Theo Twala is in an impoverished and desolate city, all of the students were in uniforms. They sang six songs for us, we sang six songs for them, and we ended the assembly with a Q&A. (Some of the questions: “When did you start singing? What grade were you in when you started singing? Where did you start singing?” Apparently they liked our singing.) In the midst of all of this I asked a teacher if Babazile Mahlangu was there (I didn’t know Sibusiso’s last name) and she said she was now in the high school but it was so close that they would bring her to Theo Twala to meet us.
We went to the main building and met Mr. Redebe, who is named in the song:
I attend a school called Theo Twala
Mr. Redebe he’s so funny and so nice, we get along
He really cares about the children and the choices that they make
Adam plugged Sean’s iPhone into a set of speakers we brought and we played the song for him. I cried as I watched Mr. Redebe listen to a song written in a country a million miles away by a man he has never met. I asked if he knew Sibusiso but he said without knowing his surname it was difficult to know which Sibusiso it was (it’s a very common boy’s name). But once he heard Michael John’s song, he knew exactly who had written the words:
My name’s Sibusiso
I live on Khumalo Street
Call me tree, call me bird
Call me tears of grief and call me joy
Joy that’s cradled and caressed
Call me blessing
Call me blessed
Sibusiso had been slow in school and the kids made fun of him. But he was incredibly artistic and could create incredible art with his hands. He told Mr. Redebe, “This talent means that I am blessed.” We asked if we could meet him, too. There was a silence. Sibusiso was stabbed and killed in 2007. He was 15.
The headmaster returned and the teachers walked us around the outer perimeter of the building and as we passed each classroom the children ran out and we were MOBBED. I was hugged, kissed, high-five’d. And everyone wanted our autograph—first on their hands, then they asked me to sign their uniform shirts. They treated us like rock stars. Finally Mr. Redebe escorted us back to the main building…Babazile was here.
She listened to her song with tears in her eyes (the rest of us were already crying). I can only imagine being told, “We need you to come to Theo Twala. A man in New York wrote a song about your letter and now some people from America are here and want you to hear it.” Babazile’s mother walked to the school to hear the song, too. The teachers told us that Babazile’s family is extremely poor and lives in a shack made of corrugated tin (we’ve seen far too many of those on this trip) but that she is a model student.
Six months ago when I asked those New York composers to pick a letter and write a song for our concert, I didn’t know a thing about the authors of those letters, except that they were kids from a school in South Africa. I never imagined that I would meet Babazile and her mother in person and be there to see them listen a song inspired by her but written on the other side of the world. This is what Broadway in South Africa is all about: using art to connect people and cultures and making new music together. Babazile’s final lyric says it best:
I come from a land so many miles away from you
But it’s not far
Jen Bender, Artistic Director
3 years ago