Why a Kid With a Paint Can Drum Could Change How Your City Sees Trash

There’s a kid somewhere in Maputo right now, banging on a paint can with a stick, and I’ll tell you why this might be one of the most exciting things happening on Earth.I mean it. We’ve spent the last twenty years arguing about whether technology will save us or doom us, whether the future of work is a Zoom call or a robot uprising, whether design can fix the climate or whether it’s expensive packaging for guilt. And meanwhile, in a coastal country most American op-ed writers couldn’t find on a map, people have quietly answered all three questions at once. With drums. Made of garbage. Played beautifully.Let me back up.Mozambique holds one of the oldest, deepest, weirdest musical traditions on the African continent. The Chopi people of southern Inhambane province have performed timbila orchestra music for so long that UNESCO named it a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2005, later inscribing it on the Representative List in 2008. Marrabenta, the country’s…