Instances of people teaching themselves how to make music is not uncommon. What is uncommon is the heights of excellence they achieve. Tanzania’s music conductor Hekima Raymond is one such person.

In 2015 he conducted the first symphony to be performed in Tanzania. Tchaikovsky’s Symphony no.5 was performed at the Dar es Salaam Serena Hotel March 2015 by the Dar Choral Society and Orchestra.

This year was even bigger for Hekima when he conducted for the first time in history, Beethoven’s Symphony no.9 Choral in Kiswahili in Dar es Salaam.

Hekima, as he is commonly known, is a self-taught music conductor and pianist, who became interested in notated music at the age of 11 when he visited a friend Moses Nnauye who was a son of musician-cum-politician, in 1991.

“He introduced me to the keyboard and he played a few pieces for me and one of them was the Tanzanian national anthem. Since then I wanted a keyboard of my own and I begged my father for one. He bought me one and we started playing common melodies together. That was how I started my journey in music.”

Hekima has been self-training for the past 23 years.

“I actually began playing music by doing East African folk songs, which I did by ear since I could not know how to read music,” he said.

His love for and experience in Catholic liturgical music however had ingrained in him a basic understanding of the structure of music and how best to organise harmony.

“Popular songs such as Kolo Kolola and Chaupele Mpenzi by Kenyan band Them Mushrooms were my favourite. Of course, my late father influenced my song selections. And we used to enjoy playing together,” he added.

“The idea to teach myself how to read music was the most viable one as there were no professional teachers teaching classical music. There are many people who train themselves. In New Orleans, I found a lot of people who used to train themselves music without having to read notes. It was simply studying by ear,” he told The EastAfrican.

In 1993 at the age 13, Hekima had his first music notation encounter when he enrolled at the St. Augustines Junior Seminary. He had his first exposure to musical notes, and it was here that he learnt notation values. He picked the harmonium as his main musical pursuit for the entire at least four years.

In 1994, he met Pascal Mhangamkali Gunganamtwa a friend and fellow musician. They did their first recording in 1997 with the St Paul choir of Dodoma, performing their own compositions.

Later the same year, Hekima had to withdraw from the Seminary musicians group due to insufficient practice time.
He however did not stop learning and by the year 2000 he had perfected performances on the organ for classical music works such as Handels’ Juddah Maccabeus and Messiah; Vivaldi; Bach’s Cantatas, Haydn and Christmas Oratorio.

He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science and Management from the Sokoine University of Agriculture in 2005.

He started working as an environmental scientist with the National Environmental Management Council in Dar es Salaam and joined the Dar Choral Society which was founded in the 1940s by the European community.

In 2006 he landed his frst conducting gig as no one in the circle of classical musicians could handle the conducting demands of classical music.

Hekima got his big break through in 2008 when he had his first performance as an orchestra conductor. According to reviews of the performance, he was impressive throughout the concert.

They performed Mozart, Handels’ Messiah, Vivaldi Choral and orchestra works. To date, he performs in Soiree Musicale cycles of classical music in Dar es Salaam.

Eventually it was necessary that for him to lead the only classical music orchestra in Tanzania, Hekima had to give up his career as an environmental scientist and engage full time in music.

So in 2009 he founded the Dar Chamber Orchestra and in 2011 he revived the Choral Society and merged them to form the Dar Choral Society and Orchestra, with him as the music director and conductor.

It has developed over the years to become a very diverse choir with more Tanzanian nationals singing in it, and is now made up of over 140 musicians from various cultures and nationalities. The musicians come from Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, Ethiopia and Zambia and beyond.

The group is currently considered the pinnacle of classical music choral performance in Tanzania. The choir boasts of being disciplined and modern, ushering in a new era of classical music in Tanzania.

On which classical musicians influenced him the most, Hekima said he likens himself to international classical music gurus. “I am between Hebert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein,” he says, speaking on classical music conductor he admires most. “If you mix the two, you get me. My friends too have observed that.”

Revisiting biographies of the two, von Karajan, who was a principle Australian conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic and Bernstein, an American conductor, music writer, pianist and music lecturer, it is obvious why he admires the two conductors.

On why he chose classical music, Hekima says back then he saw a grim future for classical music in Tanzania. There were, and still are, virtually no meaningful programmes to groom young people into becoming world-class musicians.
“The biggest challenge these institutions face is receiving students who have never touched a single instrument since childhood and only get to see and handle them at the university at the ages of 21-23. It is very difficult for such a student to excel to world standards compared with a child say in China, who gets exposed to the piano at the age of four. And this is my mission of change so that we can have excellent trained musicians in the future,” he said.

Encouraging classical music enthusiasm in Tanzania has to go hand in hand with building a school, mostly a professional music training school. This school can graduate teachers who can then teach music in various public schools. The school can also supply Tanzania players for the local orchestra.

In his own words, Hekima says, “I have had a very strong passion in me, the passion that one elder described can move mountains. I am also very persistent. Once I visualise a goal and go for it, it’s very difficult for me to give up. I visualize the end in my brain and soul and normally the results happen.”

He describes himself: “Hekima Raymond is a self-trained classical music conductor and pianist. 

Raymond who never went to any classical professional training has made his mission to inspire his community not only in classical music but also inspire Tanzanian children and the world of the centredness culture can play in our mental harmony and development.”

Hekima subscribes to the idea that African traditional music can be notated and appreciated by world class experts and can be taken to the heights of classical music and played internationally.

On his future and where his career is headed, he said, “I think my dream has come true. Now I am just implementing it and it’s in the first phase, God will define the rest,”

Critics say, for a scientificised and notated genre, such as classical music one has to go to at least a music class to become literate let alone reading such music.

Currently, classical music is taught at Makumira University and Dar es Salaam University.

In 2009 he performed Beethoven Symphony no.9 fourth movement in Dar es salaam and achieved Grade 5 from the Associated Board of the Royal School of Music.

The piano being his first love, he took a master class with Dr Peter Liou and the following year continued with piano classes with Pierluigi Tamburi, his longtime piano tutor.

He has transformed the Dar Choral Society into a corporate engagement oriented concerts where private companies are invited to sponsor the classical music concerts.

His diverse orchestral platform range from professional to amateur musicians is Dar es Salaam based.

The musician’s are professionals from the medical, legal, business and teaching professions from Kenya, Uganda and other African countries.

Recently he has had lessons from professionals such as Vatroslav Vudjan, international pianist and harpsichord player from Slovenia.

He has conducted performances featuring international figures such as Ninna Kawaguchi professional violinist in Austria; with opera singer Mimma Bringati from Italy; Danielle de Niese from the Glyndebourne Opera house in the UK and Celia Paige Vickery conductor and diplomat at the US embassy in Tanzania.