Hilton Schilder In New York: keys, bows and surprises

Look at multi-instrumentalist Hilton Schilder on the cover of his 2003 album No Turning Back, and you see a cool guy in a sharp black overcoat, cherubic with a hint of gangsta (the gold chain, and that gilt blade with which he’s seeing to his nails). That was then; this is now. On his current release Hilton Schilder in New York (https://sharp-flat.bandcamp.com/album/in-new-york ) there’s a wholly different kind of cool going on. Over the past 16 years, Schilder has matured into an avuncular elder in shades, sporting a beard of positively Tolkien proportions, perched on a bronze mushroom (part of de Creeft’s Central Park Alice in Wonderland statue) and playing a mouth-bow.

Apply your ears to the two albums and not so much has changed. Everything Schilder was doing then – the idiomatic rolling, oceanic left hand that belongs to the Cape; the intricately overlapping threads of sound; the catchy tunes segueing into adventurous abstraction and back; even the sound of the bow – are all still there. But in the 16 years between, they’ve become so much…more.

In New York was recorded live at Dizzy’s Club at Jazz at the Lincoln Centre, during a weekend devoted to South African sounds late last year: Schilder’s first visit to America.  He’s in the company of bassist Jimmy Mngwandi, Will Calhoun, a distinguished US drummer who’s played with everybody from Pharoah Sanders and BB King to Living Colour, and vocalist Siya Makuzeni.

Schilder was born into music, as a son of the late pianist Tony Schilder. His father was one of five terrifyingly talented brothers (pianists Anthony, Chris and Richard, drummer Jackie and bassist Phillip) and the young Hilton grew up immersed in music – by legend, he was sneaking time on drummer Monty Weber’s kit at the age of three. His initial instrument was percussion; he was both drawn to and apprehensive of keyboards because of his relatives’ stellar achievements.

That was then…2003

The list of Hilton’s early bands in Cape Town runs the gamut of the city’s genres and scenes: the klopse troupes; Airforce; Soft Landing; Love Supreme; Big Daddy (where he finally began playing piano); African Dream; as co-founder of The Genuines with Mac McKenzie; in Sons of Table Mountain with Robbie Jansen ; in the Goema Captains; in Rock Art and the SA/Swiss Iconoclast with Alex van Heerden; in many, many of his own small groups – and by now, I don’t know about you, but I’m getting breathless just listing them.

Along the way there have been around a dozen albums, including the intensely spiritual Rebirth, https://www.permanentrecord.co.za/blogs/news/49906051-hilton-schilder-rebirth  which reflected on his 2010 encounter with cancer.

Schilder plays every kind of keyboard and has been developing his skills on the bow for 35 years, part of his exploration of multiple heritages including the San, the first citizens of the Cape.

The bow is where In New York opens, with the two-minute Alien of Extraordinary Ability (a USimmigration category)demonstrating the delicate nuances of sound and texture the instrument can produce.

After that, the subsequent eight tracks travel through solo piano to trio work to a central set of songs where Makuzeni proves the perfect vocal partner, equally capable of those shifts from melodic to outer space, particularly on the Hermeto Pascual tribute The Art of Flying. Mngwandi and Calhoun provide empathetic support – and much more: check Calhoun’s impressive solo on Tesna 10 and Mngwandi’s work on Birsigstrasse 90.

The Cape Town jazz scene has never been snobbish about genre, never despised hummable tunes and rhythms that dancers can jazz to, never disparaged sentiment as a musical spice. Schilder’s life in music has given him an archive of all that, to weave in and out of compositions where the rhythms can also get more jagged, and the harmonies more risky, like glittering threads in a tapestry. For a predominantly American audience who may have heard less Cape Jazz than we have or may expect it all to sound like Abdullah Ibrahim, alongside skill and technical mastery the evening must have been one of constant, mercurial surprise. From the applause, they loved it.

(And of course you can hear that Schilder comes from the same musical place as Ibrahim – but his journeys and those of his family have been different, and when you run your fingers across his tapestry, it doesn’t feel the same.)

There’s always something special about a live recording. It isn’t just four players on a stage; it’s an audience musicking along and a vibe too. In New York provides all that alongside superb musicianship and Schilder’s distinctive personal vision. It’s also a piece of history, from the time just before audiences became risky and musical narratives had to be constructed for a screen.  It reminds us what we’re missing, and what, hopefully, a vaccine and sensible social behaviour will help us towards winning back. But even when we do, there won’t ever be a night exactly like this one again, because you can’t push a repeat button on great improvisation.

• A single is available of The Art of Flying , and you can watch the live show at  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8gZsDGrlP4. But I preferred the recording; the imaginary pictures are better. It’s that kind of music – thanks, Hilton.

Sisonke Xonti’s uGaba – migrating to new dreams

Reedman Sisonke Xonti

What does it mean to play ‘in the tradition’? Does it imply an obligation to ‘sound like’ specified previous musicians? Does it forbid innovation?

When we’re thinking about jazz, we can find both restrictive and much more open meanings.

Traditions that stifle

In the UK in the 1950s and 1960s, ‘Trad’  (traditional) jazz attempted to replicate some particular aspects of the historic New Orleans sound – which its predominantly white British players also called ‘Dixieland’.  We rightly find that problematic today. It raises issues of appropriation, invokes undeserved nostalgia for the trappings of the racist American Old South – and, in many cases, the claimed ‘authenticity’ of sound and instrumentation isn’t authentic at all. For a knowledgeable deconstruction see this article https://syncopatedtimes.com/reconsidering-dixieland-jazz/ .  In its heyday it became a stifling fashion. The revolutionary arrival of Chris McGregor, Dudu Pukwana and the rest of the Blue Notes in London was a massive breath of fresh air.

In South Africa under apartheid, the music ‘traditions’ approved by the censors were those defined as tribally ‘pure’ by white ethnologists at right-wing universities. There was very little room for jazz, because it didn’t fit those narrow boxes.

Traditions that nurture growth

But while the ideologues of apartheid were building prisons of tradition, other, far more open traditions were developing in the Black townships. Jazz players were drawing inspiration from the diverse voices of roots music urban and rural, the classical music of parlours, school halls and churches, and the newest ideas off the record-store shelves. In the Cape, those sounds became an isiXhosa-inflected strand of modern South African jazz: the lingua franca of Eric Nomvete, Pukwana, the Ngcukana family, Tete Mbambisa and many more, including Winston Mankunku.

Christopher Columbus Ngcukana

That was never a limiting tradition: the patriarch baritone player Christopher Columbus Ngcukana, who played over four to the floor on Tem Hawker’s bandstand, was the same man who encouraged the innovative “fowl run” squawks and honks of fearless free jazz before almost anybody else in the country.

Sisonke Xonti in the tradition…

Winston Mankunku Ngozi

When we describe reedman Sisonke Xonti as playing ‘in the tradition’, that’s the one we mean. Growing up in Khayelisha, Xonti heard those historic sounds and loved them, especially the sounds of Mankunku. https://www.newframe.com/home-is-where-the-music-is-for-sisonke-xonti/ Now, on his second album, uGaba: the Migration, formally launching today November 13, we hear the new territory he’s taking it to.

uGaba is Xonti’s clan name, and the album cover riffs on the historic theme of cattle ( remember Yakhal’inkomo?), depicting a herdsman’s hand grasping his stick as the herd looks on impassively behind him.

…and moving forward from it

The nine tracks centre on the four-movement Migration Suite, inevitably invoking Zim Ngqawana’s three-part Migrant Workers Suite on the album San. Xonti’s migration, however, very explicitly operates on different levels. Partly – signposted by Tebo Moleko’s accompanying poem – it is about the migration-dominated story of South Africa. Overlaid on that, though, is the theme of Xonti’s migration through human experience from his somewhat sheltered younger years to today’s confident awareness of who he is, and how he relates to the world and people around him.

Some of those people are his co-musicians, with whom he’s shared parts of that journey. He roomed with vocalist, pianist and co-producer Yonela Mnana for a time “and he got to know how I think and how I want a tune to sound; Yonela was the first name I thought of to co-produce.”  Bassist Benjamin Jephta, “I’ve worked with him since my first gig at Mojos in Obs. I didn’t have my sound concept yet and he helped: that was ten years ago – a very special moment. The bass is so important.” Trumpeter Sakhile Simani has been a companion “since high school in Makhanda”; guest trumpet Lwanda Gogwana “was at university when I joined the Little Giants and worked with us; he was the one who introduced me to John Coltrane – he’s like my big brother.” The ensemble also includes drummer Siphelelo Mazibuko, veteran percussionist Tlale Makhene  – “It’s an honour  to feature him” –and guest singer Keorapetse Koloane.

If you enjoyed Xonti’s debut, Iyonde, you’ll find much of the same quietly lyrical composition here. Always, though, it’s firmly in that Eastern Cape tradition, shifting fluidly from those contemplative melodies to spiky improvised fowl run, and back to the rolling rhythms of home. Minneapolis is deep blue: a moving slow lament for George Floyd. Nomalungelo  recalls the classic township tunes the Little Giants taught him, with Mnana’s vocals taking us back to the Jazz Ministers era and Gogwana contributing trumpet notes that would have gladdened the late Johnny Mekoa’s heart.

The Call is the track that’s likely to get the Kaya-FM replays: a five-minute song of positivity and new beginnings in nature and life, with allusions to club lounge sounds, but far more musical depth.  

It’s the most explicitly iconoclastic track, Sinivile, though, that’s also the most characteristic of the tradition Xonti is taking forward. The lyric talks, through call and response, about the sometimes fraught relationship between musical mentors and their upcoming successors: “Teachers – let us make our own mistakes.” Xonti’s soprano weaves around the solidly traditional rhythm patterns, emerging into the kind of freshly painted abstraction that we recognise is his alone.

“I composed the melody in Zim’s style,” explains Xonti. “But then the bridge explores my narrative of sounds. So the music illustrates what the lyric is about: we thank you, this is what you have given us – now, this is what I want to do.”

So uGaba gives us a third level of migration too: a sonic journey.  Every track pays a little of that kind of homage to Xonti’s musical foundations, but every track travels into the future too, showing where the music can go. “I hope,” he says, “that people listening will take away that sense of journey, and reflect on who they are, what they’ve been through – and where they want to go!”            

There’s only one song for today

Things have come to a sad pass when America becoming a ‘normal’ capitalist/imperialist nation again starts looking like a good thing…But, hey, let’s enjoy the moment…

2020: a Coltrane kind of year

If there’s one thing we need this year, it’s healing.So it’s maybe not surprising that 2020 has been a year for renewed focus on the music of John and Alice Coltrane (born in 1926 and 1937 respectively) in jazz internationally and in South Africa, and through new releases and reissues from Lakecia Benjamin, Winston Mankunku and Sisonke Xonti and a boundary-breaking Wits collaboration with Ghanaian multi-instrumentalist Nii Noi Nortey.

We need physical healing, of course, for a virus that’s now killed one-and-a quarter million people worldwide, and creeping closer to 20 000 in this country alone. Economic healing too, for the poverty and inequality the virus has exacerbated. (Please don’t respond that lockdowns have been, in that context, ‘worse than the disease’, forgetting all those possibly preventable deaths of breadwinners). And spiritual healing for isolation, fear, misogyny, racism and rightwing power-grabs.

Lakecia Benjamin

Lakecia Benjamin

It started in March this year with the release of Lakecia Benjamin’s Pursuance: the Coltranes https://lakeciabenjamin.bandcamp.com/album/pursuance-the-coltranes an album dedicated to the music of both Coltranes, with seven tunes by John and six by Alice. For Benjamin “as musicians our job is to heal and spread joy throughout the planet,” (https://www.jazzwise.com/features/article/lakecia-benjamin-interview-our-job-is-to-heal-and-spread-joy-throughout-the-planet-that-s-the-reason-i-play-music ) and the two musicians represented “the perfect dynamic of what a complete musicians should be…technically proficient, spiritually proficient, good human beings.”

The spiritual, intellectual and musical links between the Tranes and Africa aren’t hidden. They are there in track sounds and titles (Africa/Brass https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8XEmGhTm3A ; Blue Nile https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9Dd4UGt5rg ) and in the close personal friendships the two formed with, for example, West African percussionist Babatunde Olatunji.  John Coltrane wrote about his own spiritual awakening in the liner notes to A Love Supreme: “… in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music.”

Winston Mankunku

And that spiritual link to Africa was heard by Africans on the continent. This has been a Trane year for us partly because of two re-releases featuring the saxophonist Winston ‘Mankunku’ Ngozi, who felt John Coltrane as a spiritual presence in his own creativity. The Toronto-based wearebusybodies label has just re-released Yakhal’Inkomo https://wearebusybodies.bandcamp.com/album/winston-mankunku-ngozi-yakhalinkomo; on December 7 Matsuli Music will reissue the Ibrahim Khalil Shihab (Chris Schilder) Quartet’s 1968 Spring  https://matsulimusic.bandcamp.com/album/spring, which was for Mankunku an explicit homage to Trane. “[Spring] was more in the mood of Trane,” the reedman told me. “Even today, when I want to play, I take him and put him inside of me. Inside [my head and heart].”

Nii Noi Nortey

But that wasn’t just happening for South Africans. Another reason this has been a Trane year is the Wits University School of the Arts project Cosmology: a mini-festival that ran in the final week of October, collaborating with and building on the foundations laid by Ghanaian reedman and multi-instrumentalist Nii Noi Nortey and his Anyaa Arts Quartet. https://www.newframe.com/life-in-jazz-notes-and-rhythm/ Nortey had gone to London in 1972 to study economics, but rapidly moved towards music, inspired by Coltrane and disciples such as Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp and Albert Ayler.

Nii Noi Nortey plays an Afrifon

“The cultural outlook of this new music was also an African one, and African traditional musical instruments featured prominently (…) The music of Coltrane and especially A Love Supreme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll3CMgiUPuU was essentially a call for freedom,” Nortey told me by email from Accra. Amid the Western power manipulations of the Cold War era, Nortey says, Coltrane’s music became “a healing force [for]…the spiritual needs of the African revolutionary struggles”.

Nortey’s past and current work takes the concept of Africa brass literally; he has developed his own ‘Afrifons’. These are African wind instruments re-visioned through “the use of different saxophone mouthpieces and different lengths of bells on different lengths of pipes to produce new sound possibilities,” he says, and were initially inspired by the ways free music allowed saxophones to “squeal, scream, screech and speak”. 

Afrifonic sculpture at the Anyaa Arts Centre in Accra

The Wits Cosmology project – which, pre-Covid, had hoped to invite Nortey to Johannesburg – was in long-distance conversation with him and inspired by his work on Coltrane’s music as the programme was developed. The guiding idea, as for Nortey, was the way African jazz can break free of all kinds of boundaries. Its musical director, bassist Chantal Willie-Petersen, takes us back to Lakecia Benjamin in her repertoire choices: she included compositions by both Coltranes: Giant Steps and Blue Nile.

Sisonke Xonti

Standard Bank 2020 Young Artist in jazz Sisonke Xonti

The final link in this 2020 Col-chain is saxophonist Sisonke Xonti, whose own second album uGaba – the Migration  (no web sales yet; it should be online by then) launches in Cape Town next week. At his Johannesburg virtual launch, in conversation with DJ Kenzhero, he was asked the impossible question “Mankunku or Trane?” To which he, of course, responded, “Both, man! They’re my gods!” uGaba includes material premiered at the National Arts Festival in Makhanda back in July. One composition, Sinivile, addresses “our teachers [in music]… we hear you,” Xonti explained, “but please give us the room to make our mistakes.” He expressed the desire for many more open, cross-generational South African jazz collaborations.

And that connects with Benjamin’s work too. Unusually, in her earlier jazz studies, the saxophonist encountered Alice Coltrane first, and was instantly drawn to a musical concept that was “really powerful…really spiritual…straight to the heart”. When Benjamin then heard John Coltrane, it was with ears that heard him as “like a different side of the same person”. When she was courageously cold-calling various other jazz artists for her album project, she also sought those open, cross-generational collaborations as part of it. Among those who agreed to be part of Pursuance were bassists Ron Carter and and Reggie Workman. And their participation mattered, she reflects, because they had been part of the original healing mission: “They knew why John Coltrane made A Love Supreme.”