Update on the February 2007 Strings for Africa Trip, by Evan
Our host pastor that we stayed with this trip turned out
to be a competent guitarist himself. His name is Edward Kwendo and he
can do darn near anything including playing a rightie guitar leftie quite
well, then turn it around and play it rightie without skipping a beat.
Wow. Edward does more to help build viable people in a week than most
do in a lifetime. He knows lots of musicians so I gave him about a third
of our load.
One of the young men he helps is John (I call him Big John), who is a
seriously fine player. He works among some very troubled people in a
remote rural area and has a following of a bunch of young players using
all sorts of improbable things for guitar strings. I gave him a number
of sets whereupon he declared that those kids would deem it a true miracle.
The final third I gave to Henry Musana, my fine Ugandan friend who has
helped spread them around in the past.
Edward, true to his nature gave his nasty guitar to Big John. When I
told him I was plotting to get him a guitar he said he greatly prefers
a steel string acoustic to an electric. I knew I liked that guy. I'm
thinking I'll try to get one of those Martin HPM guitars to him which
seems an ideal guitar for equatorial Africa.
Incidentally, a number of Big John's guitarist friends actually play
nylon string guitars. Based on my radio listening time, which I did each
night on a walkman, classical guitars are becoming popular. My best guess
is that they are being influenced by Brazilian music, another one of
those nice "full-circle" stories. Anyway, we need to mix in
more acoustic & nylon strings for future distribution.
This was the best Strings for Africa outreach to date. Congrats to all.
Big John doing his thing