POLOKWANE – Badejo, a recording artist, joined the school as a life science and natural science teacher but is only teaching natural science to the Gr 8 and Gr 9 learners this year.
When he joined the school in 2012, he was let in on the state of music activities at the school. Initially, he started with the school’s brass band, which had been dead for 13 years before he came along.
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“My first encounter with one of the teachers made me understand the school didn’t have a teacher to head up the choir. I spoke to the principal about it and was granted the go-ahead and I haven’t looked back since. I just put learners together and taught them what I know musically. Later that year, we put the choir together and we started singing. It’s been challenging because there wasn’t a serious foundation for it and we didn’t have music as a subject at the school, but we managed to make a success,” he shared, adding it has been a fun experience overall.
Although the choir can be seen performing at school events and choir competitions, it was not always that way. He experienced a challenge of selling the idea of joining the choir to the learners.
“Learners at that age don’t know what they want. It was up to me to advertise it to them and make them have interest in it. A couple of learners picked up interest when they saw me play but a few became interested when they saw other learners taking part,” he explained.
Today the choir is fully functioning and he has children coming in requesting to join halfway through the year. The learners who join the choir go through an informal audition which determines whether they can pitch a note or not.
From there they are absorbed into the choir and trained for performances and competitions. The choir consists of learners from Gr 8 to Gr 11, Badejo explained that it was on purpose to exclude the matric learners because of the busyness of the grade.
