IT may sound unlikely for a teenager from South Africa to liaise with a music legend from the UK, via Zoom, to create a song together that speaks to the water crisis in Nelson Mandela Bay, but this is exactly what happened for a Grade 10 learner at St Dominic’s Priory.
Kendra Huggard (15) spent her Christmas on Zoom meetings with David Cousins, member of the rock band, Strawbs, to collaborate on a water crisis song.
The song, written by Kendra, with Cousins arranging the melody, was sung by the school’s foundation-phase choir and performed by the Grade 10 Marimbas.
The recorded version of the song will be sent to the United Nations 2023 Water Conference taking place in New York next week.
The idea behind the song is to take the message that everyone needs to conserve water to young people, their parents and friends, in countries throughout the world.
Cousins explained that he already had the pleasure of meeting the aspiring songwriter when she visited her grandmother in the UK four years ago.
Kendra’s grandmother, Marianne Haslegrave, is the director of the Commonwealth Medical Trust, of which Cousins is a trustee.
“When I met Kendra, she was adventurous and interested in everything musical. She wanted to play the ukulele so I took her to the local music shop and gave her a practice amp, in the shape of a Marshall stack, which guitarists will know all about. A few months later, Kendra won a prize at school for singing a song with her ukulele, which I was very pleased about.
“Her grandmother asked me if I could write a song with Kendra about the water crisis around the world, that could be played at the United Nations Water Conference this month and that’s how it started,” said Cousins.
“We worked together via Zoom calls over Christmas on the words of the song. It had to come from a young person’s perspective and Kendra’s ideas of using animals as the theme are what make the song fun. We had to keep looking animals up online to get ideas that tied in with water and I learned a lot.”
Cousins said that he would love to play in South Africa again and added that The Water Song, with the choir and Marimba Band from St Dominic’s Priory School, will be on their new album, The Magic Of It All.
The school’s Head of Music, Alison Hiscock, said her students were very excited to be a part of this project and to “be on TV”.
“Coincidentally, this song reminds us all in the Eastern Cape to focus on saving water as we are in the middle of a serious drought and are all experiencing the effects of water outages and dams running dry,” she said.
She added that her two colleagues in the music department, Zihle Ndika and Rebecca Barker, assisted her with this project.
Kendra said that when she visited her grandmother, who lives in an old school with a tower overlooking the sea, her grandmother drove them to see her friend, Cousins, who lives in an old school too.
“David took me to a music shop and bought me a song book to practice with. My grandmother called me on WhatsApp afterwards to ask if I could write a song with David for the conference and that’s how it started.”
