‘He dared go where most men wouldn’t’

Zimbabwean composer Keith Goddard, who died in October, fought tirelessly for music and human rights – By Peter Androsch

Cultural and artistic diversity – that was the lifelong creed through which Keith Goddard sought to connect Europe and Africa. His most recent attempt was the “Parade” festival, part of Linz’ turn as European Capital of Culture.

I am a Zimbabwean,” Keith Goddard always said whenever friends urged him to leave his country, at least temporarily, for his own safety. But no one could keep him from returning home after a trip abroad. Nothing could keep him from fighting for a better future for Zimbabwe – despite the fact that those in power denied him the right to call that land his own.

The great societal fault lines of the 20th and 21st centuries unite in Goddard. The elementary human conflicts are reflected in him as a person, even a physical sense: disability and education, ethnic heritage and sexual orientation, post-colonialism and displacement, modern despotism and democracy.

Goddard was born in Bulawayo on March 13, 1960, during a year of intensified anti-colonial conflicts. In neighboring South Africa, the situation came to a head after the Sharpeville Massacre. In Europe and the United States, the resistance of the intellectuals – ranging from Jean-Paul Sartre to Norman Mailer – against the war in Algeria culminated in the “Manifesto of the 121.” And the Rhodesian colonial regime established itself in what is Zimbabwe today. In 1965, the white minority government under Ian Smith declared independence from the UK. But the battle for Zimbabwe had already begun. And it continues still in the struggle of democratic forces against the despotism of President Robert Mugabe.

As a child, Goddard was disabled. He suffered from scoliosis, an abnormal curvature of the spine. His father refused to acknowledge the reality of the situation and instead punished the child for his handicap. There was little understanding for the disabled in those days. But in spite of the discrimination, the highly talented child asserted himself and developed, metaphorically at least, an unyielding backbone. He never let anyone shut him up. All those who remember him talk about the wonderful, powerful baritone voice that revealed the true greatness of this little, crooked man.

Goddard began to learn the piano at an early age. He trained at the Zimbabwe College of Music, where he would later teach until his death. From 1979 until 1982, he studied musical composition at Durham University in the UK. John Casken, student and friend of the brilliant Witold Lutos?awski, taught him acoustic-analytical thinking. Goddard’s sharp intellect became active, seeking out, recognizing and using complex structures.

He applied the skills he learned at Durham when he studied the unique music of the Tonga, an ethnic group, which was forcibly relocated before the construction of the Kariba Dam. In 1997, he noted: “I could hear no recurring pattern, sense no periodic rhythm and feel no beat despite the constant jogging on the spot by the horn players and singers. Everything happened in great swirls... Although I was baffled by what I was hearing, the 1950s avant-garde was a firm part of my sound world and through my experience of it, I seriously doubted that Tonga nyele was a random noise. Since then, over the past 10 years, I have spent frequent though short stays in the area, mostly around Siachilaba, listening to Valley Tonga music and trying to come to grips with it.”

In the UK, Goddard was awarded the prestigious Durham Music Department’s award for services to contemporary music. Back in Zimbabwe, shortly after the country’s independence, he was commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra of Zimbabwe to write a piece which brought together the country’s European orchestra and African choirs from the townships for the first time. The resulting work, “Kutamba,” based on choral compositions by Basil Chidyamatamba, formed the focal point of the orchestra’s 1983 concert season.

Goddard also founded the KUNZWANA Trust, a cultural organization that aims to promote and disseminate Zimbab­wean music. In 1993, a valuable partnership was forged between KUNZWANA and the Austria-Zimbabwe Friendship Association. That has since led to a number of important cultural initiatives in Zimbabwe and Austria and the ongoing Tonga Online project – a forum where artistic and musical European traditions and complex African traditional structures combine through a number of collaborations.

In his concept of artistic and cultural diversity, Goddard united Europe and Africa.

As a disabled, white Zimbabwean, he had supported the human rights movement of the Zimbabwean Lesbian and Gay community (GALZ) since 1992. He had always been at the forefront in pushing for tolerance and appreciation of those of a different sexual orientation in society but was also actively involved in broader human rights campaigning and in the fight for access to affordable treatment for all people living with HIV/AIDS. In 2006, he was appointed director of GALZ, a position that he held until his death.

At the same time, he was a board member of the Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum. He was threatened, harassed, insulted – but he did not let the terror regime of Mugabe intimidate him. He dared where most men would not go.

The three-day festival “Parade,” commissioned by the city of Linz,  was Goddard’s last artistic project. Along with Peter, Hedi and Anna Kuthan, he brought together people from around the world for extraordinary spatial acoustic experiences. “Five months ago, Keith was with us at the Parade,” recalled Peter Kuthan. “We have just completed the video documentary, which shows him dancing among his Tonga and Austrian friends, not only to the tune of Ngoma Buntibe but to the merger of sounds from different parts of the globe. He was so happy about it that he went to the studios the next day to delve into the sound recordings again with the ambition of developing another composition out of it.”

Goddard’s great achievement is that he established Zimbabwe in international musical and artistic discourse and that he propagated the extraordinary musical art of the Tonga. He also fought tirelessly for human rights and defended art and culture as an expression of a civilized society.

Goddard died at St. Anne’s Hospital in Harare during the night of Oct. 9, two weeks after he being admitted with pneumonia.

– The composer Peter Androsch is the musical director of Linz09 European Capital of Culture.