GHETTO CLASSICS

London-based American freelance journalist Brownell tells the inspirational story of a young Kenyan musician in this nonfiction book.

In 2016, the author visited Nairobi to write an article for the New York Times about a promising youth orchestra in one of the city’s most impoverished areas. Initially, she writes, “I’d viewed it like any other assignment,” but she was immediately struck by the “contagious vibrancy and aspiration” of the Ghetto Classics orchestra (abbreviated as “GC” in the text) and the community it served. Following the article’s publication, Brownell devoted more than six years of additional research to following, interviewing, and befriending the orchestra’s leadership and musicians to form this book. It explores important themes she had to cut from her initial 1,200-word article, such as the role of arts in helping a community flourish, and the empowerment of girls. GC—founded in 2008 by Elizabeth Njoroge, who authors the foreword—began by teaching 14 kids how to sing a handful of classical and jazz pieces. Operated on the grounds of St. John’s Community Church, GC is based in Nairobi’s Korogocho section (roughly translated as “mix of junk” in the Kikuyu language), a community that serves as a literal dumping ground for the city. In this grim locale, Brownell compellingly writes, “Something truly beautiful had been planted and was flowering.” GC has taught a generation of Korogocho’s children the fundamentals of singing and how to play classical musical instruments. The group has performed before world leaders, including President Barack Obama, and its organization includes more than 20 staff members and an array of partnerships with musicians, teachers, scholars, and diplomats. Many former orchestra members have obtained college degrees or earned income as adults with their musical abilities.

A skilled writer, Brownell prioritizes the voices and perspectives of GC members while contextualizing their place in postcolonial Africa’s complex social dynamics and geopolitical relationships. A central theme, for instance, is Njoroge’s grappling with the question of whether GC’s heart was “a music education program with a development side, or social programs with a musical focus.” Similarly, the book’s analysis highlights the fallacies of “deficit thinking,” common to international non-governmental organizations, in which programs focus on and deliver aid based on a community’s weakness. GC, she points out, reveals how “grassroots organizations started by locals also have been harbingers for change for the community” by building on their strengths. Indeed, over the course of this book, Brownell doesn’t ignore Korogocho’s wide array of problems with a simplistic, feel-good story; instead, she convincingly argues that “Ghetto Classics has been a conduit bringing change within the greater Korogocho community.” And although some readers may be uncomfortable with the book’s use of the term “slum” (a word that’s often casually used to reinforce colonial misrepresentations of African cities), Brownell shows care to use it in reference to very specific, named areas, not as a general descriptor. The book’s engaging prose style is accompanied by more than a dozen photographs by the author and other contributors.

An absorbing story of how a youth orchestra transformed its community.