They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. But in the case of Farai Mudzingwa’s Avenues by Train (https://cassavarepublic.biz/product/avenues-by-train/), Jamie Keenan’s cover design is an effective and accurate herald of what you’ll find inside.

The marbled ground – one strand merging into another, transforming, fading, and returning – reflects the Zimbabwe of Mudzingwa’s prose, where today and yesterday intertwine and pull apart in a fluid rhythm, almost literally watery in the blue of the end-papers. Emerging from those waves is a black bull, who steps onstage late, but whose role is pivotal.

But what you get inside those covers, is far more than what you see.

Avenues by Train is in this column because it’s a book full of music. It has a playlist, led by Thomas Mapfumo and Ambuya Beuler Dyoko’s Nhemamusasa, and including all the greats of Zimbabwe’s mbira and popular music: you’ll find a small selection of those tracks linked at the end of this column. But, more than that, the prose is infused with music: the writer’s ear is as perceptive as his eye:

“…cooking sounds, clanging of pots, the sizzle of oil in frying pans, the opening and shutting doors, the hooting in the car park, the stomping up and down the stairwell, kids screaming at bath time, bath water running, moaning and grunting from the neighbouring flats…”

And it’s a book structured by music: in its echoes, recurrences, segues and choruses, the plot enacts the sonic overlaps and ebb and flow patterns of mbira performance

But Avenues by Train is no charming musical travelogue. Rather, this is the difficult, moving story of Jedza, haunted by memories of a childhood rail-line tragedy, who in adulthood travels to Harare’s Avenues by train in search of – what? Freedom from those memories? His sister Natsai, marked by water spirits, who disappeared during a journalism internship in the capital? Work and a new life? Answers?

Don’t expect univocality and a straight chronological timeline that starts “then”, wraps up the past with a neat ribbon bow, and ends “now”. In an illuminating interview at the end of the book, Mudzingwa discusses how unhelpful he finds those kinds of boundaries: “we are living the consequences of the past [and…] we who live now are simultaneously creating the present and the future…”

So the past remains present on the potholed concrete streets of Harare: both Jedza’s own past, in characters known in childhood who re-enter his life, those characters’ own pasts, and the past of the city: the Fort Salisbury wetland, razed and drained by the colonialists to make their modern capital. Its waters bubble up and pool at the feet of those struggling to survive on the margins of corrupt capitalism, speaking of other times and ways of existing.

The voices of the past invite us in to their own stories. The core of the book is its seventh chapter, set in 1892 when the city was founded. Mudzingwa juxtaposes high tragedy, as the spiritual significance of the site is literally bulldozed, with low comedy, as the representatives of the colonial regime (including “His Honour Stephanus Johannes Paulus Preposterous, State President of the South Anglican Republic”) lay out their imperial dreams and dirty deals: “We shall build/ Hear! Hear!/ And those who resist?/ Hang! Hang!” That Mudzingwa succeeds in maintaining the devastating impact of the former while letting us laugh bitterly at the latter demonstrates a skillful writer at work.

That’s not the only wit in the book. A series of drier-than-Savannah footnotes provides a running commentary on today’s politics and society: “Second only to picking noses in public, corruption is the most consistent national programme in the forty-year history of the Republic. From airplanes, currency, famine relief grain, fuel, motor vehicles, diamonds; if there is any possibility for corruption, it will happen.”   

Finally, just as music enriches the narrative, so the narrative illuminates elements deep inside the music. Mbira music carries one weight as, alongside reggae and pop, it forms part of the soundscape of the city. There, it comforts and nudges.

It carries an entirely different weight as the book moves towards its close and Jedza steps away from his mission-Catholic upbringing to take part in a bira ceremony, where the drums, voices and mbira come into their full power as bridges to insight.

Opening with the injunction to “listen to the spirits when they bite your ears”, Avenues by Train helps us understand those teeth.

PLAYLIST

For today’s International Jazz Day (IJD), it’s worth catching up on two recent releases demonstrating how seamlessly South Africa is now integrated into the international jazz world.

But it’s also worth reflecting on how little we really value our jazz heritage here at home. Within 24 hours, two great South Africans died yesterday: boxing legend Dingaan “the Rose” Thobela, and jazzman, goema innovator and orchestral composer Mac McKenzie. This morning, while media celebrated IJD, they universally paid – deserved – tributes to Thobela’s sporting prowess. Not one has yet, as I write at 7:00am today, mourned the towering loss of the latter.

The final item in the playlist below reminds you quite what a unique and brilliant talent is now gone from us.

So, let’s temper our joy as we listen to these two albums with reflections that appreciating our own jazz heritage still has quite a long way to go.

Karl-Martin Almqvist’s Ababhemu Quartet is a 50:50 affair: the Swedish reedman and Norwegian bassist Magne Thormodsæter, with Nduduzo Makhathini on piano (and contributing one composition of eight), and Ayanda Sikade on drums. Ababhemu’s 2024 The Travelers (https://karlmartinalmqvist.bandcamp.com/album/the-travelers) is a debut recording, but the culmination of a period of collaboration dating back to 2014 when the pianist invited Almqvist to Joburg. Its conscious impulse is, quite explicitly, to play “against the history of coloniality” (https://ropeadope.com/karlmartin/).

South Africans are in the majority on Swiss drummer Dominic Egli’s quintet Plurism and the outfits fifth release, Umhlangano ( https://dominicegli.bandcamp.com/album/umhlangano). Egli and bassist Raffaele Bossard are joined by trumpeter Feya Faku and reedmen Sisonke Xonti and Mthunzi Mvubu. Faku contributes one composition of this eight; another, Introspection, comes from the pens of Xonti, Bokani Dyer and Bejamin Jephta, arranged by David Cousins, while a third is based on the poetry of Sibongakonke Mama. A dedication here, too, is to internationalism, in the form of SOS Mediterranée and Sea Watch, whose Captain Rackete defied Italian maritime authorities to bring 41 shipwrecked migrants safely to port.

In character, they are of course very different albums. Exactly like their international counterparts, South African jazz players don’t only sound one way or represent only a single tradition.

The Travelers is an intense outing, deliberately exploring the spirituality shared across continents, with a very Coltraneish vibe, underlined by Almqvist’s yearning tenor voice. That area of otherwordly searching is also Makhathini’s space, and he contributes sombre, moving spoken invocations to Smangaliso (miracle) and to the title track. On his own solo, Ukubuyisana, he reminds us what a gorgeously contemplative, soulful pianist he can be when not delivering the crashing crescendos that bigger ensembles sometimes demand. As for Sikade, his sticks and brushes add gold everywhere. He’s sensitive to the patterns and nuances of each composition, and to what his co-players need. The more I hear of him, the more I wonder why his profile in this country isn’t higher. On any stage, he’s a master.

Umhlangano (gathering) is equally intense, with the focus on process: the tight, empathetic meshing and hocketing of five very distinctive instrumental voices grounded in Egli’s edgy engine room (which takes centre-stage on Children Song).

Faku is sounding literally brilliant these days: there’s a new brightness to his instrumental tone. His composition, A Pocket Full of Cherries for Mongezi, is a witty but faithful take on the approach of those two iconoclastic horn-men, with space for a knockout bass solo from Bossard. Mvubu and Xonti segue beautifully between warm, fat choruses and imaginative solos, while Kanon (which plays with both classical and jazz concepts of voices fitting together) lets flute as well as saxophones speak.

In just over an hour and a half combined, these two albums demonstrate the idiocy of borders in cultural creation – and in several other areas too. This is not “us” playing “their” music, or “them” playing “ours”. This is music from and to the world and a  fitting sermon for IJD.

And they make me wonder at why we have no place for such international cooperation in our music awards. Surely a “best cross-border collaboration” category somewhere is long overdue? Awards may have their downside (which I’ve written about at length) but work of this calibre ought to be getting recognition that transcends narrow nationalism.

https://dominicegli.bandcamp.com/album/umhlangano

In a couple of weeks’ time, on April 30, it’ll be the UN-sanctified International Jazz Day. (IJD  https://jazzday.com/.)

The event had been destined for its first African host city in 2020: Cape Town. Sadly, Covid put paid to that. But it returns to Africa this year, with the host city of Tangier in Morocco. 

The programme for the international concert is an impressive one, reflecting the diversity of sources, styles and generations that make up jazz, from Gnawa drumming to avant-garde trumpet and from blues guitar to Spanish/classical harmonica. The southern African flag is held high by saxophonist Moreira Chonguica and vocalist/trumpeter Mandisi Dyantyis. You can access the concert via a YouTube stream (2023 is already up at https://www.youtube.com/@Jazzday) – and you should.

You’ll also be able to find also multiple in-country events, including in South Africa, although the UNESCO link (https://jazzday.com/events/2024/south-africa/) so far, lists only a few of those here that I know have been scheduled. Come on, organisers – this is one programme you definitely need to get with. It costs nothing to register your event and have it posted on the IJD website.

IJD is a great initiative, and the website offers all kinds of information and resources that jazz educators and promoters can draw on, as well as video of the previous global concerts. It really only falls short in one dimension – gender.

As in all previous years, the global concert bill features a minority of women musicians: six out of 31 artists; just under 20%. Over 49% of the world’s population that UN bodies such as UNESCO are supposed to represent is female. Of those six, only one, reed player and composer Lakecia Benjamin, is an instrumentalist; the rest are vocalists.

And, as you can see, the official poster at the top of this page portrays four male instrumentalists and a woman singing. (As it happens, a remarkably skinny woman in a thigh-split dress, but we really don’t need to have that conversation again, do we?)

So, in venues and education establishments all across the world that use the official poster, professional female instrumentalists are invisible, and jazz-aspirant young women are told that their only role in the genre can be to wear a pretty dress and sing.

That message was probably unintentional – although making selections for a concert bill is a 110% deliberate and intentional process. And in terms of conveying a message, a picture is worth 1000 words.

Research demonstrates that all across the world, women musicians feel marginalised, exploited and unsafe. Now, South African research – more when it’s published – backs that up too. The cumulative impact of posters such as the IJD one is to naturalise the situation: to imply that what it portrays is the only way things can and should be.

It would have been so easy to do things differently: to create silhouettes that were gender neutral, or 50% female, or even – perish the thought! – 80% female. (At which point, no doubt, the neanderthal whines about “wokeness” would have sounded loud.) But go to the IJD website, and you’ll see that quite a few events have chosen not to use that poster and to feature female instrumentalists, not only graphically as an abstract idea, but photographically: the real women already playing jazz instruments professionally in localities worldwide.

Maybe we could make a start in South Africa by – in the best jazz tradition of improvisation – riffing on that poster and using one that looks like this instead?

I completely missed the 2019 release of Cape Town collective Kujenga’s debut album, Nationality. (https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=4aEZwlQBEWg&list=OLAK5uy_kRe1SLktM-wilODoUmzU57DCc-DMzK4ps). Listening to it now, I realise that even had I heard it at that time, it probably wouldn’t have prepared me fully for their second release, In the Wake, https://kujenga.bandcamp.com/album/in-the-wake ,which launched on Sharpeville Day last month.

In 2019, the outfit was smaller – no horns – helmed by Milnerton-born bassist Zwide Ndwandwe, with most compositions by his twin brother, Olwethu and the rest of the band largely friends and neighbours.  For their story back then, see https://www.okayafrica.com/kujenga-south-african-jazz/

Nationality is well worth your ears, even now: everybody on board is a talented musician, and there’s particular strength in having such a stylistically flexible guitarist as Thane Smith, who’s clearly listened to and learned from everything from rock to Afrobeat. The compositions had an appealing, catchy lyricism. Still, it was a debut album, and – like most debuts – thus a showcase for a bit of everything, from the militant hymning of the Qhawekazi Prelude to the slightly sappy, slightly too Americanised, Rn’B of Lost With You, the edgier, more philosophical WeWe and the urgent syncopations of Let the People Sing. With a start like that, the band could have gone in a few different future directions, and if I’d heard it then I’d have filed it under “Interesting – see what they do next”.

In the Wake, plus lots of live gigging (including with mentors The Brother Moves On) is what they did next. It’s way more than just interesting.

The line-up is now the Ndwandwe brothers, Smith, and Skhumbuzo Qamata on drums plus brass and reeds: trumpeter Bonga Mosola, trombonist Tamsyn Freeks, and Matthew Rightford on tenor sax, with some percussion from Jerome Silengile and Riley van der Merwe.

That more diverse sonic palette with reed and brass shows off interesting arrangements  – most compositions this time are from Zwide – far better than a smaller group could. Of the ten tracks, four are in the 8-10-minute range, with space for passages of contrasting texture and mood, and growth and development from a simply stated head to a satisfying resolution.

That matters, because Kujenga (the name means ‘build’ in KiSwahili and signals the outfit’s commitment to pan-Africanism) has a very clear agenda here: to reflect on the pandemic and the post-pandemic disasters threatening humanity and to propose political solutions. (That word ‘political’ has a bad rep – but politics is much more – and more important – than waving the flag of some party or other every five years.) The way the compositions resolve often enacts a collective coming together to overcome crises.

One thing that struck me when I heard Nationality was the way some tracks evoked the feel of the South African jazz of the Bheki Mseleku /Moses Taiwa Molelekwa era: effortlessly bridging the divide between popular and conscious musics. Partly that was the idiomatic impact of many compositions originated by a pianist – but, as Zwide told Charles Leonard, (https://mg.co.za/article/2023-11-25-wake-up-and-hear-the-music/ ) such music was also what the brothers grew up hearing.

In The Wake draws on that context without feeling retro. There’s impressive playing from everybody, more knockout solos than I can list (listen to Freeks on Lesedi), but essentially it’s a wordless ensemble album, where mood, empathy and working together shape the message and the sound. Zwide has told several interviewers how conscious he is of the responsibility – and risks – of being “leader”. He much prefers the title “facilitator” and, on this showing, that approach generates the right kind of results.

Not all the new jazz being created in Cape Town comes out of the UCT College of Music (Zwide is a CPUT graduate; not even in music) and Kujenga’s highly distinctive voice usefully reminds us of the multiple sources (historic, national and international) of the city’s sonic landscape.

From feedback online, it’s clear that Lesedi is rapidly becoming a listener favourite: a militant opening, an appealing, soulful melody and delicious solos. For me, Abaphantsi with its collective movement towards the light is irresistibly stirring, and my one regret is that Hymn for Hani isn’t part of this collection. But In the Wake isn’t really an album of discrete tracks. All its elements fit together and flow seamlessly to carry the vision of its makers. I won’t need reminders to look out for Kujenga’s third one.

Last Friday April 5 was a good day for South African jazz. Not only did it see the first two releases from the new Africarise label (https://mg.co.za/friday/2024-04-06-africarise-sa-jazz-to-the-globe/), but also the first truly archival release from a more venerable one, As-Shams.

Its not the first time As-Shams has dug into its archival tape crates. But those earlier outings have re-released existing albums that, under apartheid-era, independent label conditions, never received the profile their quality merited.

But African Day (https://as-shams.bandcamp.com/album/african-day) is one you’ve never, ever heard before unless you worked at the label or the Satbel Studios back in 1976.

At the album’s core is a quartet led by pianist Dr (he received his honorary degree from UCT late last year) Tete Mbambisa, with tenorist Duku Makasi, bassist Sipho Gumede and drummer Gilbert Matthews. On the first five tracks, they’re joined by Basil Manenberg Coetzee on tenor and flute and Barney Rachabane on alto; on the subsequent four by trumpeter Dennis Mpale. (A trumpet is also clearly audible in some of the earlier horn choruses, and trading bars on Mr Mecca. But as is the way with ancient tapes, across two sessions – the second tape of which was actually un-annotated – it may not have been noted anywhere and thus hard to credit accurately.)

The album’s a kind of sonic bridge between the 1969 Soul Jazzmen quartet partnership between Mbambisa and Makasi on Inhlupeko, (https://matsulimusic.bandcamp.com/album/inhlupeko-distress ), the much larger horn line-up around Makasi on Tete’s Big Sound, (https://madaboutrecordslabel.bandcamp.com/album/tete-mbambisa-tetes-big-sound ) – also recorded in 1976 – and the Mbambisa/Coetzee partnership on the 1979 Did You Tell Your Mother? (https://eatingstanding.bandcamp.com/album/did-you-tell-your-mother)

It also reflects musical ideas that Mbambisa had been considering at least since Inhlupeko, as he told me when I interviewed him for the liner notes of that album. In particular, he’d felt old Room at The Top playing partner Mpale’s horn didn’t have the right sound for his concept of Inhlupeko, but “I had a place for that on another recording…”

The gorgeous, 17-minute title track gives the horns tons of room to stretch out and definitely announces Rachabane, then just 30, as a formidable player. On the sprightly label tribute Koh-i-noor (label boss Rashid Vally’s father’s general store: As-Sham’s first home), there’s a rare extended flute solo from Coetzee.

Throughout, as always, we have more evidence of Gumede’s skill and intelligence as a bass player. The more of these archival recordings that emerge, the clearer it becomes that there’s an important bass book waiting to be written about him.

Part of Mbambisa’s power as a musician has always been the astuteness and insight of his arranging. His own piano solos are beautifully conceived, but unshowy and perfectly judged to let the shape and spirit of each composition emerge. These tracks are about the music, not any individual player – including the leader. Listen to his piano, though – for example, his solos on Siviwe, Mr Mecca and the closing, untitled, track – and you’ll hear a true original: a sharp modernist whose roots nevertheless couldn’t be anywhere else but here.

That said, it’s also wonderful to have more of Makasi now out on record. When people talk about historic South African saxophonists, it’s often Kippie Moeketsi’s name that (not unreasonably) pops up first. But Makasi is just simply a gorgeous player: fluent, warm, gentle and powerfully soulful. That’s all on display in these ten tracks.

Whenever a release from the 1970s emerges, it adds more to our understanding of the 1970s jazz scene here. Far from a decade that was “empty” or “silent” – as music writing focused on the achievements of South Africans based overseas tends to suggest – a rich ecosystem of original music flourished. Apartheid may have been attempting to restrict and shut off creative spaces, but by zig-zagging the country (the players on this album hail from Johannesburg, KZN, and the Eastern and Western Capes) and using the grassroots networks created by jazz-appreciating communities and individuals, music was still made. It’s wonderful that it’s now – at last! – seeing the light of the African day.

https://m.facebook.com/uct.ac.za/videos/video-well-known-south-african-composer-and-pianist-tete-mbambisa-was-recently-a/139607629172620/?locale=hi_IN

Somehow, the Feb 23 release of the Lady Day Big Band’s(LDBB) debut album, Livus’umoya (https://theladydaybigband1.bandcamp.com/album/livusumoya) passed me by at the time.

But it’s a release worth celebrating.

First, new big bands on disc are always worth celebrating. The scope their generous sonic palette offers to composers and arrangers is un-matched and so they give listening audiences access to many more combinations and textures than are possible with, say, a trio.

Second, the LDBB is unique in South Africa because it’s an all-female big band.

That could be a double-edged sword. It allows anybody still hanging on to archaic prejudices to dismiss and pigeonhole the ensemble in whatever way the reactionary Right currently finds fashionable. And it lets events and venues wanting to appear gender-diverse without really trying off the hook, by ticking that box with 20-odd women all at once.

Some research I’ve been involved with – more details when it’s published – suggests that a majority of women in live music in this country experience stereotyping, lower (even than usual) fees, and a sometimes horrifyingly unsafe and hostile environment. That’s wholly consonant with a wealth of research from everywhere else, for example https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5804/cmselect/cmwomeq/129/report.html So the LDBB represents something else very important: a safer and less oppressive space for professional growth and opportunities to work.

The LDBB has been around since 2018, helmed by music names already respected in Cape Town: singer and UCT scholar Amanda Tiffin; vocal artist Lana Crowster; and trombonist Kelly Bell, all of whom also compose and arrange. Many of its members have come or are coming through the ranks of the UCT College of Music, making those professional opportunities key as a bridge between higher education and career.

Debut albums are often a calling card for the full range of what their artists can do, and the nine tracks of Livus’Umoya are no different. They range from catchy, Zap Mama-style vocal Afro-pop (Ayo Ayo) through the chilling, oratorio-like Elegy for the Forgotten Child and clubby rap (Outa My System, co-composed by Crowster and Bokani Dyer) to a rousing closing medley of South African vintage pop (Burnout, uMqombothi and more).

Along the way, there’s a beautifully raw, tender version by Crowster of the Francois van Coke/Karen Zoid Toe Vind Ek Jou (Then I found you), classic mbaqanga in Bell’s The Calling and, perhaps most poignantly, one of the last appearances on disc by the late Gloria Bosman, leading Busi Mhlongo’s Yehlisan’umoya Ma-Afrika. That track should be in everybody’s collection.

There’s plenty of the unison chorusing and horn conversations that are the meat and bread of a big-band sound: full, warm, precise and disciplined – a tribute to both Tiffin’s arranging and the players.

With an ensemble this size, it becomes impossible to pick out too many soloists. It hardly needs saying that the voices impress. If you don’t know them by now…. What stayed in my memory (probably because I love that Cape-typical, big, rounded horn attack) were Jessica van der Merwe’s robust tenor and Tracey Appolis’s bass on Tuku andClaire Rontsch’s alto and Bell’s trombone on The Calling. Faced with such diverse material, Annemie Nel on drums exercises exactly the right kind of skill in the engine room every time, including in her own brio-infused solos on that number and Tuku. Possibly because her work so far has been confined to the Cape, I reckon Nel is one of the best but most under-exposed drummers working right now.

I could have lived without the vintage pop medley. It’s joyous and well executed, and has clearly become an audience favourite over the years. But that’s space where we could have heard another original from Bell, or from another under-exposed South African jazz composer such as Siya Makuzeni, Shannon Mowday or even – if you wanted that old-school feel – Dorothy Masuka. We need more spaces for female-composed repertoire as well as women players. At the same time, this album is a calling card for a band newly on record. If I’m realistic, it’s probably that medley rather than some of the other more interesting material (such as Tiffin’s intricate, interlocking Chilojo), that’ll get them the corporate dinner gigs they need to survive and thrive.

Some of the names I’ve mentioned above will be new to you. That relates not to how well they play, but rather to the music landscape they – and all of us – inhabit. It’ll take more than buying the LDBB album to change that, but it’d be a start.

PLAYLIST: GENERATIONS OF THE LDBB

https://www.youtube.com/@theladydaybigband7870

The year’s first jazz festivals used to happen around Easter. Then, a whole bunch of public holidays meant whatever month the religious event fell in turned into one long weekend briefly interrupted by a few bothersome working days.

This year, they’re both in May.

Newcomer, the Prince Albert Journey to Jazz, now in its second year, stretches over the week of 1-5 May, with the concert events concentrated at the weekend. The event has been scheduled since last year, with most of an exciting line-up announced in January: enough notice to make plans and bookings.

The revenant Cape Town International Jazz Festival, after a Covid break and then a baffling series of on-again/off-again return notices, including the possibility of Easter, suddenly announced on 11 March that it would in fact happen on that very same weekend, 3&4 May.

Sometimes, I wonder if some of the people organising music aren’t music’s worst enemies.

Two jazz festivals in the same province, four hours’ drive apart, on the same days and very likely to appeal to similar audience demographics? That certainly risks being perceived as a spoiler move by CTIJF, even if it wasn’t intended as such.

It definitely robs audiences of the chance to see some of our best musicians, when they’re appearing in two different places at the same time. Both bills are strong, and artists should never be blamed for the caprices of organisers.

And you can trust the artists in both places to deliver their very best.

CTIJF has Nduduzo Makhathini, Mandisi Dyantyis, Carlo Mombelli, Bokani Dyer’s Radio Sechaba, Zoe Modiga, Billy Monama, Benjamin Jephta and fast-rising newcomers Kujenga. The overseas guests are from the UK: dynamic Afro-jazz outfit Kokoroko, and multi-genre drummer Yusuf Dayes with his ensemble. Oh, and Matt Bianco (Google them) who are inexplicably presented as a jazz headliner.

Tickets will cost you R950 for the weekend, but that will get you only into the acoustic hell of the big downstairs hall and the outside stage. You’ll pay a R30 crowd-control supplement for every single concert ticket in what used to be the Moses Molelekwa and Rosies venues. I say “used to be”, because in what can’t help feeling like a slap in the face for South Africa’s jazz heritage, all the stages have been renamed: Sapphire, Ruby, Emerald and Topaz. Sorry, that’s just naff. Kippie Moeketsi, Moses Molelekwa and Basil Manenberg Coetzee have been displaced by a bunch of meaningless minerals.

Prince Albert Journey to Jazz, curated by pianist/composer Kyle Shepherd and arts broadcaster and jazz advocate Brenda Sisane, has Thandi Ntuli with a new SA/Swiss ensemble called A Million O’Clock. She’s joined on the bill by South Africans Skyjack, Afrika Mkhize, Darren English, Cameron Ward, and rising UCT vocal star Giuliette Price. From overseas come the highly-praised Berklee Women of the World vocal ensemble, the Italian-American trio of ECM artist, pianist Giovanni Guidi, and multi-instrumentalist and AACM member Adam Zanolini with his project the Heliacal Rising of Sothis.

There’s also music rooted in Prince Albert’s Karoo setting and (as the name implies) the concept of artist development. Price guested at the inaugural festival as part of the UCT Little Big Band. They’re back this year with new players; she’s now leading her own ensemble. Ramon Alexander directs the Karoo Jazz Project; Jonathan Rubain brings Die Koortjies Band.

Most South African festival bills remain male-dominated. Prince Albert moves a lot closer to the kind of gender-representative bills we should be seeing everywhere.

The festival is helmed and produced by local NGO, the Prince Albert Community Trust (PACT), providing work experience and production training for 80 or so young people. A percentage of the ticket cost for other activities in the run-up days (yoga, art and craft exhibitions and more) also goes to PACT. A weekend ticket will cost you R1430.

So, both festivals offer superb musicianship and both are likely to challenge audiences’ increasingly empty pockets. The name-change of stages at CTIJF seems to signal a commercial vision; Journey to Jazz is community-led. CTIJF offers predominantly established names; Prince Albert, some of those too, but likely a more surprising journey.

May’s a heavy work month for me so I won’t be at either. Next year, let’s hope no potential audience member has to choose!

PLAYLIST: some of the artists you might not know:

Often, on Human Rights Day, I publish a playlist of songs related to the fight for freedom, from here and elsewhere. I’m doing so again below. (One of them isn’t a song, but Jayne Cortez’s poem, Rape, says things that could never be prettied-up with music.)

What are you doing with the day? Chilling? Catching up on a Netflix series? Quaffing a few cold ones and charring bits of dead animal over hot coals?

Or maybe, if you’re in Joburg, heading up to Constitution Hill for their Human Rights Festival?

The Hill, of course, and the Concourt within it, are the jewels of our democracy: the places whose very existence embodies our commitment to the right to speak freely. We should not only celebrate the existence of these places, but use the space to live the freedoms won through struggle.

Except it’s not always as simple as that.

Since late last year, a group of elderly struggle veterans of the Khulumani Galela campaign have been staging a sleep-in protest on the Concourt steps.

Their strategic demand is for the re-examination of a TRC process that many saw and still see (https://humanities.uct.ac.za/apc/trc-and-codesa-failed-south-africa-its-time-we-reflected) as deeply flawed and incomplete, and for adequate reparations for those whose contribution has still not been acknowledged. (Remember, these are the parents and grandparents whose efforts and wounds won us the right to decide what we should do on March 21.)

Their immediate, short-term demand – the reason they are still on the Concourt steps after all these months – is much simpler: that the countless politicians and bureaucrats who have come to peer at their protests and mumble generalities, simply keep their promises.

“We’ll have a response for you in a few days”; “We’ll get the Minister (or somebody higher) to come and listen to you”; “On Tuesday, you’ll have an answer”. All these and more have been said. Over months. None of those promises has ever been kept.

Now, with high-profile events on the site, the presence of a group whose actions should be celebrated today as symbols of the human rights we have won, seems to have become an embarrassment.

They have been denied the use of toilets and washrooms on the site. Three weeks ago, police were called to move the protestors (mainly aged between 60-80) away, in the process injuring some between the heavy Concourt doors and manhandling and tearing the clothing of one who had suffered a seizure. No media noticed this outrage or the devastating irony of its location.

In a recent book, Solidarity, researchers Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt Hendrix track the damaging effects of the “professionalisation” of protest. Those with grievances are once more distanced from those who should hear them. Professional lobbyists stand in the middle. Protest is confined, individualised and tidied-up.

But what the Galela campaigners are doing on the steps of the Concourt is what exercising the right to protest really looks like. It isn’t neat or obedient to orders. It’s a collective effort, multivocal, genuinely democratic, and making do with what it has, on hard concrete steps, under plastic as shelter from the storms.

If you go to Con Hill today, take time to stop by the Galela protest. It’ll tell you more about what human rights ought to mean than many other things on display.  

And now some music to back up that message.

In many ways, that response was typical of the man.

Kwela, born in in 1939 in Chesterville in KZN, never suffered fools gladly, had no mock modesty about his own talents, and constantly resisted being confined within a stereotyped box of what outsiders perceived as “local” idioms.

With the re-release mid-last year of his 1976 album Black Beauty (https://matsulimusic.bandcamp.com/album/black-beauty – sorry, I missed it at the time) we can hear – if we didn’t already know – how well justified he was on all those counts.

The album is a beautiful production: re-engineered to eliminate any fuzziness of the kind that haunted many recordings of the era, with a perceptive set of liner notes by Kwanele Sosibo, who’s consulted other guitarists including Bheki Khoza and Billy Monama to provide real insight into the guitar sound, and not simply the man’s biography.

By the late ’50s, Kwela was in Joburg, eagerly absorbing mentorship from the man he called “The Master”, pianist and composer Gideon Nxumalo, as well as hanging out with the Dorkay House jazz crew (which was later one feeder for Lucky Michaels’  Club Pelican jazz crew).

But he was also composing for the man credited as the architect of pennywhistle kwela music, Spokes Mashiane. In terms of repertoire and stylistic character he was as much the genre’s architect as Mashiane was.

Reflecting on that connection for the liner notes of his 1998 release for Sheer Sound, The Broken Strings of Allen Kwela, he said: “I was [Spokes’] main composer, hence being linked with the origin of kwela music. As I am Kwela by birth, it was just sheer coincidence and I happened to be right at the centre of things – and we sold millions of records we were never paid for.”

The Dorkay/Pelican crew were Kwela’s buddies and regular collaborators. With a selection from among them he released his debut, Allen’s Soul Bag, for Teal/Atlantic City in 1972 (https://www.last.fm/music/Allen+Kwela+Octet/Allen%27s+Soul+Bag ); featured with the Cliffs on the 1975 Alex Express with Winston Mankunku (https://as-shams-busy-bodies.bandcamp.com/album/alex-express ) and was, at the same time, laying down tracks for Black Beauty, released the following year.

Intended to cash in on the success of Dollar Brand’s Mannenberg, Sosibo notes that while Black Beauty‘s opening (title)track is somewhat in that mould, Kwela vehemently resisted making a whole album to someone else’s pattern: his producer at the time, Patric van Blerk, reflects ruefully that “radio thought it was too jazzy…”

What goes unmentioned is the politics of Radio (Bantu) at that time. “Too jazzy” actually meant “stubbornly refusing to fit into an apartheid-defined tribal box for Black music.” Sosibo notes the visual clunkiness of the original cover design (classical statuary plus blonde Afro). But how else to evade racist censors who were deeply wary of anything linking the word “Black” to anything positive, original or creative, as Pops’ Mohamed’s Black Disco(very) found out?

After the Maseru workshop, Kwela had – but refused – a chance to go to America for the second time. The first had been an invitation from Hugh Masekela some years earlier. Kwela later reflected “Maybe I should have taken that chance…the people who went into exile seem to have done well for themselves…”

Pianist Pat Matshikiza recalled his response to Masekela’s earlier invitation: “Allen Kwela said: ‘I ain’t going because I want to play jazz, not mbaqanga. I know they’re calling us to play mbaqanga. That’s America. Jazz has got its own clubs there. I want to go and play modern jazz; I can’t be playing those other tunes.'” Kwela was proudly South African, but he saw himself as a South African jazz player, on a par with any in the world.

Black Beauty shows us why.

Even on the opener, there are spicy twists of swing in the bump-jive pattern, complemented by a tricky trumpet solo from Dennis Mpale (also prominent on Allen’s Soul Bag). Kwela’s guitar, never one  to do the obvious, screws around with the repetitive riffing characteristic of the style: his lightning-fast fingers (not for nothing was one comparison with Joe Pass) fit an astounding amount of inventive ornament around those repeats.

Then, the studio’s requirement fulfilled, the subsequent three tracks do what Kwela wanted to do. Mild Storm takes us back to the round, full, arrangement style that had characterised Soul Bag. Three saxes – Kippie Moeketsi and Barney Rachabane on altos and Stanley Sithole on tenor – make the most of soulful chorusing, and Kwela stretches out in a distinctly modern soul-jazz exploration. This is music in a similar headspace to what another bunch of KZN innovators, The Drive, were creating. For that reason, although it’s wonderful to discover more from Moeketsi, in reed terms it’s Sithole’s album.

We go up-tempo for the irresistible Qaphela: Kwela’s kind of South African jazz. It’s unmistakeably grounded in those South Coast foundations, but it looks forward to the modern jazz of albums such as Roots, rather than backwards as Brand’s deliberately retro, jangly keyboard had done. Mpale’s solo – he features on Roots too – takes the same direction, as does Moeketsi’s brief, distinctive intervention.

Finally, Willow Vale – minor-key, bluesy and full of heart – demonstrates how well Kwela could write. Neither the arrangement nor his own solo assert guitar here; rather, they showcase the gorgeous melody he’s written. Like pretty well everything else Kwela did in music, there’s style, taste and grace alongside formidable musicianship.  

Kwela died in 2003 at the ridiculously young age of 63. His breath finally failed him, after a few years when he’d managed, stoically and philosophically, with one functioning lung.

He never got the recognition his massive talent merited – outside musicians’ circles, where his skill was respected with something close to awe. Voice covered his composition You Are The Way on their second album; Monama created a powerful tribute performance that ought to be out as an album too. Hear those, and more from the man himself, in the playlist below.

There are occasional bright spots, though. One was back in 2022 when Blue Note and Universal Africa launched the Blue Note Africa imprint and supercharged the international profile of Ndududzo Makhathini. (Makhathini’s originality and skill had already been noticed by admiring overseas audiences long before that, right from the days when he was touring the US with the late Zim Ngqawana, so the label shouldn’t claim all the credit – but it certainly helped.)

Despite 2024 being parent Blue Note’s 85th birthday, when you might expect a celebratory flurry of African music, I haven’t seen news about other African jazz releases since the pianist’s 2022 In the Spirit of Ntu. If the imprint has survived, it’s a really terrible communicator – there’s nothing online past January 2023.  Such initiatives, you’ll have noticed, have a habit of quietly falling flat after a global music capitalist has taken a loudly-fanfared interest in “Africa”…

That’s not the kind of flavour-of-the-month interest our original jazz scene needs.

So it’s great, early in 2024, to be able to report on a rather different kind of initiative to make South African jazz sounds more accessible to fans in the rest of the world. In mid-January, US label Ropeadope announced a partnership with City of Gold Arts to launch label group Africarise “focusing on the art and music of Africa”. We know independent label Ropeadope already. It’s been responsible, for example, for releases from Mbuso Khoza, Linda Sikhakhane, Mthunzi Mvubu and Bakithi Khumalo – the label’s curatorship certainly has good taste! Look at their artist page https://ropeadope.com/artists. You’ll see a similarly distinctive, interesting selection of artists from elsewhere: contemporary music taking an imaginative approach to root sources and innovative concepts from America and around the world.

Mover and shaker in Africarise is somebody else we know: Jazz at Lincoln Centre’s Seton Hawkins. Hawkins is a longtime visitor to this country with family roots here. In past years he interviewed as many of our jazz players as he could manage for Allaboutjazz. Hawkins has more than ten years in music as educator (he leads JALC’s Swing University programme) , publicist, advocate, independent manager and DJ . Hawkins hosts a one-hour South African jazz show on SiriusXM’s RealJazz channel https://www.siriusxm.com/channels/real-jazz that’s well worth catching despite the time-zone gap.

The first releases from Africarise are due out on April 5: Steve Dyer’s Enhlizweni: Song Stories from my Heartland

https://stevedyer.bandcamp.com/album/enhlizweni-song-stories-from-my-heartland

and McCoy Mrubata’s Lullaby for Khayoyo with a new outfit of US collaborators, Siyabulela, that also includes the now US-based South African trombonist Siya Charles.

https://mccoymrubata.bandcamp.com/album/lullaby-for-khayoyo

They’ll be followed by music from impressive Kenyan pianist Aaaron Rimbui and pianist Thembelihle Dunjana.

I’ve heard those first two: beautiful music that I’ll be covering more fully either here or in my intermittent review slot in Friday at the Mail&Guardian. For now, let’s just say I have high hopes for Africarise: a project helmed by people ith a track record of knowing, respecting and loving the music, on a manageable, un-hyped scale, with a roster of artists who, already with these first releases, start to represent the detail and diversity of how South Africa sounds when it makes jazz.  

Listen to more about the project here: