Heshoo Beshoo: back in full force across Armitage Road

Some albums become legends almost as soon as they appear. One such was Armitage Road from the Heshoo Beshoo Group, initially released in 1970 on the EMI Starline label. Now, in its half-century year, Armitage Road has received a respectful re-release from the Canada-based wearebusybodies label, in digital, vinyl and CD formats https://wearebusybodies.bandcamp.com/album/heshoo-beshoo-group-armitage-road.

If you’ve never heard it, you no longer have an excuse.

Why the legendary status? In part, it’s because of that initial, quite small, distribution, so that many more people heard of the music’s reputation than could actually buy the album – something that also happened to another famed LP, the Soul Jazzmen’s Inhlupeko.

Partly, it’s also because of what happened subsequently. The Heshoo Beshoo reedmen, brothers Henry Sithole on alto and Stanley on tenor, and drummer Nelson Magwaza, joined up with guitarist Bunny Luthuli, a very young  keyboard player called Bheki Mseleku and others, to form another legendary outfit, the Drive (Way Back ‘50s). Then, in 1977, the brothers died tragically young in a Tzaneen car crash, devastating South Africa’s soul jazz scene.

But most of all, it’s legendary because of the music, and, in particular, the compositions and guitar playing of Cyril Magubane.

The Sithole brothers were both distinctive, robust players who, like many saxophonists of that era, got their schooling through early careers playing penny-whistle. Henry featured in Almon Memela’s Jazz 8 and Mackay Davashe’s Jazz Dazzlers and played in the pit band for Gibson Kente’s musical drama Sikalo. It was Henry’s alto playing that most excited the writer of the original liner notes, Al Lewis: he described it as the album’s “most avant-garde influence (…) he plays in a way that shows he’s keeping up with developments in the States while still retaining his African roots.”

That makes me wonder how many South African altoists (er… Kippie Moeketsi?) Lewis had really listened to. Certainly, Sithole has a warm, personal voice and good ideas. But he isn’t – and this is absolutely not a criticism – ‘avant-garde’. He isn’t aiming for the edgy, challenging modernism of, say, Batsumi: he plays like his musical heart is in a different place, and later characterisations of The Drive as ‘soul-jazz’ capture that direction well.

It’s interesting that the Sitholes, Magwaza and Magubane were all born and started their musical lives in Durban. Only the bassist, Ernest Mothle, originated in Gauteng, in the cradle of modern jazz: Mamelodi.  That they all ended up in Orlando says a lot about the jazz university the streets of that particular Joburg township were. Two years after Armitage Road, Lucky Michaels would establish The Pelican as a pioneering Black modern jazz venue there. But the place’s jazz inheritance extends a long time before that. Orlando was the home of early bandleaders Wilson ‘Kingforce’ Silgee and Solomon ‘Zuluboy’ Cele, of trombonist Jonas Gwangwa and more. Sophiatown, as Orlando jazz fundis will always tell you, was never the whole of Joburg jazz.

Armitage Road in Orlando was where Cyril Magubane lived in 1970 and the album cover, which shows the band trucking across it, is clearly a riff  (and a subtly subversive riff at that) on the iconography of the Beatles Abbey Road. Magubane in his wheelchair appears a small, frail figure, the slenderness of his limbs emphasised by the chair’s cumbersome wheels.

There was nothing small about his musical ability or intellect.

Magubane had contracted polio when he was three, and had needed a wheelchair since then. When he cut Armitage Road, he was 24. Think about that: he was of an age when, today, he might barely have graduated from a university music course. Yet he composed four of the five tracks on the album (Henry Sithole wrote the other). Each melody is distinctive; all are memorable and spacious vehicles for imaginative improvisation, from the stomping rhythmic base of Amabutho to the stretched-out contemplation of Lazy Bones.  Magubane was doing the most avant-garde thing of all, seeking to sound like himself, and, at 24, he was already a composer with voice and range.

However, it’s easy to forget about the compositional intelligence when you hear the playing. Professor Mageshen Naidoo has done extensive scholarly work on Magubane’s music, and performed his own arrangements of it; he remains blown away by the fluency and imagination of the original playing. Listen carefully to how each solo begins, unfolds, travels and comes back home, listen to the dazzling execution, and you’ll be left in breathless awe every time. As guitar historian and player Billy Monama points out, of course Magubane was building on the foundations of earlier South African guitar masters, whose names we might not even know, so incompletely documented is our jazz history. But, oh, what Magubane did with that!

Those original 1970 liner notes, though well-meant, are clearly products of their time. Lewis ends his track-by-track commentary with: “Emakhaya means ‘back home in the bush’, and it’s obviously where Cyril feels most at ease.” We wouldn’t make those reductive assumptions today. ‘Home’ can be geographical, spiritual or even metaphorical. The apartheid regime permitted Black citizens to feel at home only in ‘the bush’ (and after the 1913 Land Act, not even in most of that), but the cosmopolitan sounds that Heshoo Beshoo create proudly assert how at home they also were in the city, and in the world. And in their music.

Happy 103rd Anniversary Dizzy

Trumpeter, composer, activist – and US Presidential candidate a long time before – and politically miles ahead – of Kanye West would have turned 103 yesterday October 20. Watch this documentary to remember a great musician:

Black Wednesday: don’t leave arts writers out

Yesterday, October 19, marked the anniversary of Black Wednesday: the day in 1977 when the apartheid regime attempted to stifle independent Black media in South Africa with closures, bans, arrests and imprisonment and arrested multiple Black Consciousness activists. It was an acknowledgment of how well the newspapers had been doing their job. In the year since the state-sanctioned murders on and after 16 June 1976, they had – not alone, but significantly – ensured that the growing, national and proactive, resistance movement, and the powerfully inspiring messages of the Black Consciousness Movement, were known and understood by their readers. Black Wednesday was not solely an attack on the erstwhile freer segments of the press.

Black Wednesday poster – Judy Seidman

 Rather, it was aimed at the events, movements and people covered by those press stories, and on the human right to know and discuss the momentous events undeniably happening in the country.

So yesterday saw many excellent, thoughtful discussions, speeches and other events recalling 19 October 1977, and providing timely reminders of the necessity of a free press and accurate news reporting for democracy to work. With – unless I have missed something – one omission.

Nobody brought the role of free, effective cultural journalism into the picture.

In case anybody thinks I’ve got my priorities skewed, let’s remember how important cultural formations were in inspiring the activism of that era and how prominently culture featured in the thinking, speech and activity of Steve Biko and his peers. The apartheid state understood that well: all those ostensibly ‘small’ township drama groups, writers’ circles and art classes that formed such powerful hubs for change were also stifled wherever the police state could identify them. One of those gagged on Black Wednesday was one of our finest poets, Don Mattera.

But how free is cultural journalism today?

In the mainstream media, as I’ve often noted, not so much. There is a place for a limited amount of serious cultural coverage of the South African arts scene – but that’s ‘premium content’ so it goes behind a paywall where only those with resources can access it.  It’s never part of the public archive where our history ought to be documented. That’s the most basic kind of ‘not free’.

Those kinds of searching stories remain a minority in a sea of lifestyle and showbiz nonsense. Media houses today are far more nakedly investment vehicles for their shareholders than before  (though they always were that). The tyranny of analytics logging story clicks means journalists who want to keep their gigs face pressure to churn out mostly what “everybody” is interested in. When most readers have no other kinds of stories to select – or even imagine – that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And editors who want to resist those pressures are far more likely to choose battles on the ‘hard’ terrain of news than on what it perceived as the ‘soft’ territory of the arts. On that level, writers are rather less free than you might imagine too.

Percy Qoboza, editor of The World (second left) , is arrested on the first Black Wednesday

As Anton Harber has noted https://theconversation.com/journalism-makes-blunders-but-still-feeds-democracy-an-insiders-view-146364  it’s sometimes only with philanthropic support that media today can effectively support readers’ right to know what’s going on in the world (including what’s going on in the arts, though Harber doesn’t say so). So long, that is, as your donor stays strictly hands-off, without implicit or explicit strings about content or line. Some do; some don’t.

I once challenged an editor about the dodgy ethics of a conflicted arts story from a writer who was also considered a hotshot news reporter. “Oh, that’s only a ‘soft’ story,” I was told. “It doesn’t really matter. Their news stories are fine.”  As it later turned out, they weren’t. But that’s another reason why excluding cultural journalism from these debates is a grave error. Everything that matters about press coverage in general, matters about every single area of that coverage – including the arts.

Finally, arts journalism matters just as much for democracy as any other kind of journalism because it’s the space where we talk most about who we are and who we could be. And if those spaces are diminished…

So please don’t leave us out of these vital debates. Don’t minimise the role of our kinds of stories. From Malombo, the Dashiki Poets, Mdali Arts, the Malopoets, the Mhloti Theatre Group and so many more formations of the mid-1970s through to today, the arts, and those who document their work in the media, have been an integral part of the struggle for democracy. We still have a role. And our freedom still matters.  

Opening up for music needs savvy, sense – and sunshine

The tiny room is stuffy and packed. You’re shoulder-to shoulder, but you still have to shout over the amplified sound. You’re so close to the stage you can see the drops of sweat on the saxophonist’s forehead, and almost feel the hot notes blasting out of the horn. Ah, jazz clubs…those were the days.

They were also the most conducive conditions possible for the spread of Covid-19. And now is not the time to bring them back.

South Africa hasn’t had an ‘easy’ Covid epidemic, unless you’re comparing it to the incompetent nincompoopery and evil, capital-driven indifference of some other places. Nearly 18 000 of us have died, and that’s not counting the tens of thousands of  ‘excess deaths’ apparent from national statistics (more than would have been expected for this period of an average year). Some of those at least relate to Covid. Tell those bereaved families we’ve had it easy.

We’re averaging around 1 000 new cases daily. Ignoring the daily zigs up and zags down (which tell you absolutely nothing), the overall trend has – if you look at the recent tiny uptick optimistically – now stayed there for a while. It’s better than it was and medical management of the illness has improved, but it absolutely hasn’t gone away.

SARS CoV-2: A new, unwelcome & still only partially understood virus.

And yet, musicians desperately need work and we all crave live music – so what can we do?

The first thing to acknowledge is that the SARS Cov-2 virus that causes Covid is new. Every day, scientists are learning more about it but we still don’t know everything. 

Not just ‘a little flu’

It doesn’t behave like flu. One sufferer seems able to infect more people, and a higher proportion get sicker and die, though the majority do recover. Some infected people have symptoms that aren’t typical, have few symptoms, or even no symptoms. But they can still pass the illness on. Children and young people can catch it. Most of them don’t get very sick, but some do, and some die. Some people who had mild symptoms initially then get long-run health complications that constrain any kind of active life and in some cases end up killing them. We don’t know whether having had Covid-19 once gives you immunity or, even if it does, how long that immunity lasts.

But we do now know that the most important route of infection is through droplets (bigger) and aerosols (miniscule): the invisible particles that enter the air from infected people’s noses and mouths when they breathe and speak. People emit more of these when they shout or sing. It’s very likely the same is true when they blow air forcefully from their lungs through a musical instrument to produce a note (https://medicine.uiowa.edu/iowaprotocols/wind-instrument-aerosol-covid-era-covid-19-and-horns-trumpets-trombones-euphoniums-tubas-recorders ).

The Covid virions that get into the air in these ways can stay alive for a long time, particularly in humid conditions, and can travel quite long distances before settling on surfaces (or you and me – yeucch!).   So being crushed together in sweaty, poorly ventilated indoor spaces for extended periods of time is a recipe for infection. Outdoor crowds carry some risk, but less when distanced and masks are worn.

Wear a mask!

All masks, worn properly (over both nose and mouth; not as a necklace or headband) work to protect you; how well depends on what mask. If you can see sunlight through it, it’s probably not much use. Dalek-type face shields alone are fairly useless: air gets in and out all around the shield. Wearing an effective mask properly gives good protection to everybody around you by keeping any Covid bugs you may have, in; it also gives you some protection against their bugs. So if everybody wore their mask properly at all relevant times, we’d be doing a lot to frustrate SARS CoV-2 – and to show that we cared about other people and valued their lives.

Given this knowledge, how – and how fast – can we restore the joyous public life that thrived around jazz clubs?

Covid “checks” at the door alone won’t work. Thermal scans that merely spot a raised temperature might tell you about a dozen other conditions that aren’t Covid, but would miss asymptomatic or atypical Covid. Many fast tests (including antibody tests) currently have quite high false result rates (in some studies, as high as 1 in 5) – they’ll get more accurate as the science grows, but they’re nothing like error-proof yet. Waiting for ‘herd immunity’ means waiting until more than 60% of the entire population has been infected, and has either died or can be reliably guaranteed to have longish-term immunity. We don’t have that knowledge yet. Such immunity looks unlikely on current evidence. All the inevitable deaths and chronic illnesses the ‘herd immunity’ strategy accepts will be even more cruel and pointless if we confirm Covid immunity is only short.  The best and only real ‘herd immunity’ will come from an effective vaccine, accessible to all South Africans, and mass, free, vaccinations as regularly as necessary. Getting there safely will take as long as it takes.

One side of safe reopening depends on government, not on musicians and venues. First, the public health messaging about masks, ventilation and distancing needs to be stepped up consistently and clearly in all languages (and enforced). It’s got a bit lost in all the jubilation about relaxing lockdown levels.

Nirox: one place for a gig but expensive and not so accessible

Second, South Africa does have world-class knowledge about testing and contact-tracing, gained in the struggles against TB and HIV. In some of those campaigns –  for example, the DOTS TB initiative – community structures and organisations were empowered. That’s something that’s been far less evident in tackling Covid-19: a tragic missed opportunity. Even though fewer people are asking for tests, strategic, proactive testing and tracing must continue, with the insights and power of grassroots communities playing a leading role.

And in that safer general environment, the live music industry needs to build on our great advantages: our outdoors and – even in Winter – our weather. That doesn’t just mean music in parks, or game parks, sculpture parks or golf courses (now there’s a thought…). Sure, those are part of it. But they’re inaccessible to most people, and even city green spaces are scarce outside the rich suburbs: a recent study mapped inequalities in Joburg park access that precisely follow the oppressive lines of apartheid https://news.trust.org/item/20200807021440-1ayj2/ . 

Maponya Mall: another place for a gig?

But we have city squares, and fountain-cooled outdoor Mall plazas; football pitches and basketball courts – and especially, we have streets and pavements. If city authorities unwound the red tape and the licensing rules and cut costs; if class-prejudiced plaza landlords snipped the human barbed wire of their security guards; if we made space for distanced crowds by excluding some of the polluting cars that have made our lungs more vulnerable to Covid anyway…That’s what some other cities are doing: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/12/liveable-streets-how-cities-are-prioritising-people-over-parking?CMP=share_btn_link

And, yes, if that ever happens, maybe that’ll be me you see, a few feet away in the sunshine, happily hollering for the sax solo – inside my mask…

New Horizons: a truly starry compilation

Not all compilations are necessary..

Does anybody really need compilation albums any more? After all, any idiot with a Spotify account can now whip up the digital equivalent of a mixtape in ten minutes. And some commercial compilations –  like the inexorable Now That’s What I Call Music juggernaut, now on incarnation…is it 107? – don’t exactly add lustre to the concept.

With jazz, it’s an even more contentious business. Every jazz album tells a complete story. Ripping one track out of that narrative and shoving it into bed with others similarly decontextualised, without the buffer of any spoken link, risks creating uneasy sonic bedfellows.

The people who know how to do it properly, of course, are deejays, for whom every session is an exercise in live compilation. So when a jazz compilation jointly curated by a DJ and a jazz musician – DJ Okapi (Afrosynth boss Dave Durbach) and bassist Shane Cooper – comes along, it’s probably worth a respectful listen. And Afrosynth’s New Horizons (Young stars of South African jazz) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmppAxH2Suw not only rewards that listen, but very effectively reasserts the merits of the compilation as a recorded music format, even in these digital days.

New Horizons is a 12-track double album, currently available as a hard copy on vinyl only via collaboration with Amsterdam’s Rush Hour Records. It’s also on Bandcamp at https://afrosynth.bandcamp.com/album/new-horizons with availability promised on additional platforms.

The release draws on music from 2014 to this year, from musicians including Cooper himself ( with Mabuta on Slipstream)  to Yonela Mnana, Lwanda Gogwana, Zoe Modiga, Bokani Dyer – but I’m not going to fill the page with all 12 names.

One thing an album can’t do but a compilation can is to situate one musician’s output in the context of their peers. So, for example, Lwanda Gogwana’s Maqubeni with its implicit uhadi line finds companionship in the “Xhosa chords” of Dyer’s Feya Faku tribute Fezile and Mandisi Dyantyis’ Kuse Kude.  Such networks of parallel inspirations mirror the networks of shared education and working collaborations mapped by Sam Mathe’s highly informative liner notes.

Because the major labels are often inhospitable homes for innovative jazz, another service a compilation like this can offer is to provide access to performances previously reliant on a musician’s constrained self-distribution resources. That’s the case, for example, with the Siya Makuzeni Sextet’s Out of This World, an album never promoted as widely as its quality deserved. (However, the fact that so many South African artists now self-produce does reduce the bureaucracy and expense that made compilations requiring cross-licensing between big labels so difficult.)

And of course the flip side of decontextualising tracks is that you’re forced to listen to them with fresh ears. Vuma Levin’s Hashtag is one of the shorter tracks on his Life and Death on the Other Side of the Dream, an album offering a lot of multi-textured, complex music. Heard alone, it strikes you just how damn neat and perfectly formed the composition is.

Putting a compilation together is, of course, an act of curation. It demands not just knowledgeable selection, but skill in framing and juxtaposing items. It’s in those choices that we hear the producers’ voices most clearly.  Play the discs as albums (not, as a deejay might, picking one track at a time) and the experience manages to be seamless but not soporific. There are no uneasy leaps from texture to texture to jar your ears, but there is a careful unfolding of change and variety. It’s like the space-travel that the symbolism of the title and the iconography of the cover art suggest: everything you pass on the journey is a star, but each has its own distinctive beauty.  

Finally, of course, a good compilation can be an archive of its theme: in this case, the new South African jazz of the past several years. Since the demise of the Sheer Sound label, a gaping chasm has formed in the SA jazz archive. Great music has been released, but unless you listen to the right radio shows, or follow the right Facebook pages, you might never know until after a limited pressing has been exhausted – try, for example, finding Levin’s debut album now. Without claiming to be complete and comprehensive ( it would take a dozen such releases to do that, and you’d probably still miss something) New Horizons nevertheless provides a representative sample of the sounds that could have been heard live over the period that makes fascinating and rewarding listening. Theorising about compilations aside, this is lovely music.

For that reason, it’s a pity the hard copy is a vinyl-only release. Not every collector who wants a physical copy of this archive in their files owns the right equipment to play it. But if there are more like this to come, it would certainly be worth investing in a turntable or two….