Over at This is Africa:
“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars”, someone once said, and it’s easy to nod sagely when we read something like that until we remember that most of us don't actually have the guts to shoot for the moon, which might be one of the reasons we admire those who do.More here
Image courtesy of This is Africa
So you gotta hand it to Ivorian Martial Landry Kouakou Assokoly Yao (Landry for short) who is set on becoming an international star in what must be one of the world’s most elitist music arenas: Opera. Throw in the facts that Landry has had no formal training whatsoever (he practices every day using videos and recordings downloaded from the internet), Opera isn’t particularly big in Ivory Coast - so there’s no local scene to support him - and getting into one of the top-tier music academies in Europe – which is the first step in Landry’s plan – is something that eludes many who have had years of formal training and you begin to understand the full scale of the challenge ahead.
