In Chapter 4 of the #TheDignityProject, Cape Argus deputy news editor Lance Witten speaks to Benjamin Nkala, whose passion for music is something to take note of.
Cape Town - Looking at Benjamin Nkala, a dreadlocked, grinning man, skin pulled taut over his sharp features, one would never imagine the kind of skill he has.
Living on the streets has not diminished his passion for music. Using off-cuts of teak he collects from a timber factory in Woodstock, Benjamin makes xylophones and marimbas, which he sells to schools and individuals.
“You tune it to Nkosi Sikelel,” he says, looking up from a stooped position, hunched over the basic frame that will soon become a xylophone.
Also read: What is #TheDignityProject?
“That way, you can play anything.”
Using just a handsaw, Benjamin cuts ever shortening lengths of teak, measuring them by sight.
“I use teak because of its resonance.”
He drills a hole at either end, through which he will thread elasticated string for the notes to rest on. Carefully balancing the length of teak about 30cm long between his thumb and forefinger, placing them over the holes at one end, the rest of the plank dangling below, he taps it with another piece of wood. A melodic woody sounds pierces the cooling autumn air. “Middle C,” he grins satisfied, nodding in agreement with himself.
“You have to hold it here, so the sound can escape,” he says. “If you hold it like this” – he grips the end of the plank in his hand – “the sound doesn’t go anywhere.”
He taps the wood with his tuning plank. The dull wooden sound is barely audible two metres away.
Benjamin started learning his skill at St Gabriel Catholic Church in Gugulethu when he was 13. He later learnt to read music at the Frank Petersen Music School in Paarl.
Now 45, Benjamin has been making instruments for schools and youth groups, transferring his skills. He charges from R100 an instrument to R30 000 for a full set of marimbas.
“But I never learnt how to manage this money. I just lived from order to order. It’s not sustainable. And I have no workshop. Imagine I had a space to store wood and use power tools…” He trails off.
Space is afforded to him at the The Carpenter’s Shop, but it is not always amenable because he only has between two and four hours to work on his instruments. And there is no storage space for him.
“If I don’t finish an instrument in the time I have, I might as well abandon the project.”
The instrument he is making takes shape in a little over an hour. His work is remarkable.
“Check this,” he says, sawing a sliver off the end of one length. “It’s now a different note.” He uses his tuning plank. The note is indeed sharper than it was before.
“Now, you cut like this-” he uses the saw to make incisions into the middle of the plank, cutting nearly precisely 1cm into the wood. “Now listen…” He taps the tuning plank against the teak. “It’s flatter and lower now, hey?”
It is.
After his mother died well into his adulthood, the husbands of his five sisters started putting pressure on him to move out of his family home.
“My sisters, they say I have no claim to the house. Just because my mother died, now I have to leave?”
He was bullied out of the house in Gugulethu and soon found himself on the streets. That hasn’t stopped him from working on his instruments when he manages to get his hands on raw materials, tools and a space to work.
“I sometimes sell to traders. They want to give me R60 and then they sell it to tourists for R250, saying it comes from Africa. I make African thumb pianos too…
“If I maybe had storage space, like the traders have, maybe I can sell the stuff myself,” he says. “Cut out the middle man.” His face brightens as he smiles toothily at the thought.
Benjamin says a lack of education about finances and bad life choices have led him to his situation. “I’m wanting to make a change. I’ve been featured in papers before,” he says pulling out a weathered photocopy of a community newspaper article. “The music man,” he chuckles.
Benjamin is now involved in an initiative that seeks to protect Khoisan culture: “My roots,” he calls them.
He says his work, recreating traditional southern African musical instruments, is crucial to this.
“The language is already dying. If the music dies, the culture is gone.”
Benjamin pauses to admire his work.
In less than two hours, Benjamin has built the base box, cut 12 note planks and is about to thread the string around the screws.
He has achieved this using nothing but hand tools, without a measuring tape and tuning the raw wood using nothing but his finely-tuned ear.
Once it’s completed, he begins beating out the first few notes of the national anthem. It’s somewhat off, but instantly recognisable.
“Needs a little more work, this one. But I was in a rush.”
Benjamin is short on elasticated string and the raw rubberised bumpers that would be the buffer between the planks of music-bearing, planks of wood and the frame.
“To protect the notes.”
He excuses himself to skarrel for more, and returns from a scrapyard a few hours later. “I cut this from a bicycle tube.”
Benjamin explains that when you’re living on the street, creativity needs to take a back seat because the struggle for survival is far more important, he says.
“The one feeds into the other. If I can work somewhere, I can make something for myself and get my own place. But if I only get a place to sleep, it’s the same cycle.”
Cape Argus