Not one, but two new releases from Feya Faku – and a book.

It’s been a very long time since the last new release from trumpeter/composer Feya Faku as leader. He’s featured prominently in the work of others, including Jeff Siegel in 2017 (King of Xhosa https://music.apple.com/za/album/king-of-xhosa/1196697175 ), Ayanda Sikade (Movements https://music.apple.com/za/album/movements/1451472323 ) and Dominic Egli (Azania in Mind https://music.apple.com/gh/album/azania-in-mind/1444921084 ), representing a close and productive relationship with Swiss musicians based around the Birds Eye Club in Basel, where he first played in 2004 alongside the late Bheki Mseleku.

He spent a lot of early 2019 preparing his book of compositions, Le Ngoma Songbook: a collection of close to a hundred original compositions paying tribute to the South African greats Faku learned from and worked with, and the jazz tradition they helped to shape and he has developed further. There were plans for an initial launch in 2019 and at that time, Faku described the book as “a documentation of my feelings for the people I crossed paths with, young and old”.

Faku and his sextet performing at the Birds Eye in Basel

But then 2020 became an even tougher year for Faku than for many other players, with live performance opportunities made impossible not only by the general devastation of Covid but by personal ill-health too.

Faku worked hard on his recovery through the crises. It took time, but he got there. This weekend he celebrated his return to music at Sandton’s eDikeni by re-launching the book (currently only available from the venue https://www.facebook.com/eDikeniSandton/  or Lere Ntshona 073-236-1268 – but with other distribution promised soon) and material from not one, but two, new albums.

Live at the Birds Eye https://music.apple.com/us/album/live-at-the-birds-eye/1591525361 features the music, and players, we heard in Faku’s performance live streamed for the National Arts Festival in Makhanda. At that time, my review noted: “this was a self-assured musician who’s retained all the beautiful, grave and lyrical trumpet sonorities we expect. He’s still our magisterial elder statesman of the horn. But in the company of a bunch of Swiss modernists  – Domenic Landolf on reeds, Fabian Gisler on bass, Dominic Egli on drums and Jean-Paul Brodbeck on piano – he was also often playing red-hot, risky and fast.”

We get ten numbers from Faku’s stint at the club, with guitarist Keenan Ahrends converting the quintet into a sextet. The playlist reflects the diversity of Faku’s compositions; not only the moving, stately ballads we’ve come to expect (Grandmother’s Gift is irresistible), but lots of homage to the mbaqanga/marabi roots of South Africa’s jazz sound.

One of those latter is the sprightly JG at Nikki’s: a tribute that visits in mood both the veteran’s early years with Mackay Davashe and his much more experimental New York frame of mind

That track also features – in a very different format – on the second release: the drumless trio studio recording Impilo https://music.apple.com/us/album/impilo/1592236207. That’s not Faku’s usual lineup, and shows us, again, a different side of the hornman. It features longtime Swiss bass partner Fabian Gisler, and Cuban-born pianist David Virelles, whom Faku met in Santiago de Cuba in 2000. A New York Times rising jazz player pick, now US-based, Virelles has worked with Jane Bunnett, Thomasz Stanko, Henry Threadgill, Steve Coleman and Mark Turner. The pianist’s own discography is well worth exploring, combining as it does a deep respect for Afro-Cuban musical roots and a joyfully risk-taking, contemporary imagination. See, for example

Faku’s compositions on Impilo gives Virelles the space to stretch in both those directions. The title track sees him exploring the idioms of Eastern Cape jazz under first Faku’s voice and then his horn; The Garden offers edge-of-the cliff impro: rapid cascades of notes that remind us the piano started its African life as percussion – and it’s a fresh kind of composition from Faku.

Faku’s own trumpet sound is back with a vengeance: crisp, rich and soulful. The great advantage of a trio recording is we get to hear a lot more of him. Faku is always a generous leader, and that means in larger groups he’s generous with stage time to all his co-players; he never hogs the solos. Here, with the spotlight shared by only three, that generosity ensures the format breathes – one of Faku’s great strengths as a soloist is his understanding of how important to the music space is. But a third of the time it breathes through his horn, and for those of us who usually sigh regretfully when his solos end, that’s a bonus.  In the quiet of the trio, you get a chance to appreciate just what a gorgeous brass tone the man can produce.

Long years of working with Gisler have built empathy; Virelles’ participation adds something equally empathetic that South Africans haven’t heard before, and in this fresh frame it’s a joy to hear lots, and lots, of trumpet. “Impilo,” Faku reflects in his press release, “it’s about celebrating life and giving thanks to my people, my ancestors, for giving me my life back. To be alive and play this music. I guess that’s what I’m here for.”

Never doubt it. And it’s a triumphant return.

A new album from Herbie Tsoaeli arrives right on time

It’s nearly a decade since bassist and composer Herbie Tsoaeli’s debut album as leader, African Time https://open.spotify.com/album/1y1weZF2NW09jr0Noy4EKf, was released in 2012.

The musician hasn’t exactly been idle since then; he performed regularly as both leader and sideman before Covid, and there was a live release, African Time Quartet in Concert https://open.spotify.com/album/6cp8me5N3wfyZx1v42CszI in 2014. African Time was enormously popular, consolidating the Nyanga-born player as the elder statesman of South African bass. The opener, Hamba no Malume, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSLFrOgWcmk  became something of a jazz club hit in its own right, and that debut showcased something some audience members hadn’t registered up to that point: that Tsoaeli didn’t just hum along with his strings, but was an interesting and engaging vocalist too, as one of his instrumental forefathers, Victor Ntoni, had been.

However, the success of African Time, and the frequent audience calls for tunes from it, meant less interest in what Tsoaeli might have been doing on his own time – the ‘time’ puns are going to be unavoidable in this discourse – between then and now.

Which was, among other things, creating beautiful, fresh material for his third album, which comes to us this week: At this Point in Time (Voices in Volume). [*I’ll post the streaming platform links as they become available.*]

“At this point in time” is, of course, a phrase beloved of politicians too pompous to use the word ‘Now’. Tsoaeli is far too smart to use it uninflected. On the album the title track gets its translation as Woza  Moya: come to us, divine spirit – or, in other words, we need you now! That parallels the themes of some other lyrics, documenting hope and resilience in the face of neglect and hardship.

Bass playing is about time: keeping it, pushing it, stretching it, embroidering on it, sharing it. Tsoaeli has been articulate about the deformations – in life as well as music – that come from commodifying time: ”Chasing time makes people view time as money and acts as pressure to do things prematurely.” So the ‘points in time’ on the album encompass all those inflections in the meaning of the word and more. The 11 tracks create sonic space for all the different things musicians can do with time, and they also riff on the various “times” of jazz in South Africa, from marabi through the tight timekeeping of our indigenous hard-bop to contemporary free playing.   

The core of the album is what remains South Africa’s dream jazz rhythm team: Tsoaeli on bass, Andile Yenana on piano and Ayanda Sikade on drums. But there are newer musicians too: Yonela Mnana on piano, Sakhile Simane on trumpet, Sisonke Xonti and Tshepo Tsotetsi on reeds and Steven Sokuyeka on trombone, as well as Bongani Nikelo, Sakhile Moleshe, Gontse Makhene, Busisiwe Sibeko and Khumbuzile Dhlamini adding voices in various combinations.

Two things are striking on this album, beyond the inspired and accomplished playing you’d expect from all the names above. The first is that Tsoaeli writes really good tunes. Without ever closing off the space for edgy improvisation, every track is anchored in a melody you can walk away humming. The second is that – even more than on African Time – his compositions aren’t constrained within a single approach and contrasts in mood, idiom and feel make the hour-plus playing time feel much shorter.

The first track, Wozani nonke Sizothandaza, is a quiet, stately melody that from the first growling notes of the leader’s bass proudly declares the album’s identity: grounded in conversations among rhythm instruments. That’s followed immediately by the tight, infectious swing of the Trane-ish Alone on Your Own (for me, the catchiest of an incredibly catchy bunch of numbers). It’s often said that how an improviser talks is echoed in how they play – and Tsoaeli’s husky, thoughtful bass here really does sound like how he sings and speaks.

Two numbers later and we’re at Umntu, expressed in a rolling marabi voice – and that in turn gives way to East-Ggs-Skomline to Khaltsha: a South African train blues (except it’s not a blues) that gathers speed, volume and complexity as Sikade’s relentless drums impel the wheels forward. The train (notorious for stranding passengers) fades into the distance, just as the train of ‘development’ also leaves so many behind on desolate platforms.

There are tracks with the feel of the Soul Jazzmen (Back Home Backyard); of Voice at the old Bassline (When Times Are Good) and of traditional community music through the ancestral voice of Makhene on Palama. None feels retro or over-familiar; Tsoaeli’s arrangements and the freedom he gives his improvisers’ ideas ensure they are musical memories from the perspective of now – of this point in time. Palama, for example, weaves into its homespun flashes of bright horn chorus work and Mnana’s sinewy, percussive, highly contemporary piano.

The album ends with two songs: Siwa Sivuka for male voice and Siyabulela for female. After the fierceness and intricacy of some earlier improvisations, this close is well-chosen, bringing the album back to the human voice: the most timeless of instruments. Siyabulela is almost classical in feel – I’d love to hear the Resonance String Quartet play it.

At This Point in Time is an album well worth the wait. But still, on this evidence, I hope the gap before the next one isn’t quite so long…

Manifesto Watch: don’t hold your breath for any local government to help rebuild live music

Sometimes, I suffer so you don’t have to.

This week, that meant ploughing through all the ill-written, empty, abstract generalities of election manifestos, to see whether any political party has the faintest idea how local policies can help rebuild the music ecosystem devastated by Covid.

7th St Melville: Time Out just voted it one of the world’s coolest spots – but without local government support, how long will it last?

Just like the general election manifestos back then, the answer is mostly no.

And just like the general election, the shining exception is the EFF. Having a seasoned music professional like Ringo Madlingozi as an MP obviously brings some insight to the table.

Let’s survey the dismal landscape of the other parties first, though.

They say a fish rots from the head down, and the current aggressively moribund state of DSAC is perhaps reflected in the fact that the ANC manifesto – rendered almost un-navigable right at the start by a collection of slogans masquerading as an index – has no section on arts, culture and heritage at all. Maybe, when the ANC administration in Gauteng launches its Cultural and Creative Industries Growth Strategy on 30 October as part of the Basha Uhuru event at Con Hill https://www.bashauhuru.co.za/about-us , the party will redeem itself at least in one province. If so I’ll provide an update. But that’s still only one province…

The DA manifesto does have a reference to enhancing public spaces. That rings somewhat hollow when we remember the way the DA Cape Town city authorities gutted cultural vibrancy by brutally moving on any musician attempting to play on St George’s Mall and in other public spaces back in the pre-Covid days. The IFP manifesto talks about “partnering with traditional leaders”: a minimal acknowledgment that culture and tradition do exist accompanied by not much else. The Action SA manifesto proposes broadband expansion which, in today’s world, is a vital tool for musicians. It also promises to “offer access to extramural …cultural activities…at our community centres” (Er…what community centres?) “…to make young people well-rounded individuals.” In the context of the party’s gentrifying, law n’order, free-market (“end red tape”) policy assault on low-income inner-city dwellers and their spaces, that may not mean too much. The Good Party says nothing at all.

The EFF concludes its manifesto with two full pages on cultural policy. Too much of it is focused on hard infrastructure: pull down old statues; commission new ones; change street names; build multipurpose centres. Much of that won’t change performers’ situation at all. Whether we need yet more bad bronze statues of politicians is very moot indeed.

EFF MP Ringo Madlingozi: it helps for a party to have cultural workers with practical experience in its ranks

Some of the ideas, however, are practical and useful. Improved support for community radio, incentivising the activities of local visual artists and the sale of their work; hiring local performers for all official gigs (rather than expecting them to “volunteer”); free loan of recording and music equipment – and, especially, creating small, hyper-local open-air performance arenas are all concrete ways to create work and start the project of rebuilding our live music scene. The proposals still beg all the questions of raising revenue and re-prioritising budgets – without which nothing will happen – but in terms of its theory, EFF local arts policy is light-years ahead of any other political party.

When the South African Cultural Observatory surveyed the Covid-fuelled decline of live music in late 2020 https://iksafrica.com/reports/Impact%20Analysis%20-%20Live%20Music%20and%20its%20Venues%20and%20the%20South%20African%20economy%20during%20COVID-19.pdf, restoring the centrality of local music places and support policies was a loud, recurrent demand. The EFF proposals speak to that directly.

But what else could political parties be doing to rebuild live music? All the parties promise improvements in transport and infrastructure, including electricity supply, and if that really happens, it will make the work of musicians and access for their audiences considerably easier. There are specific, targetted measures that could do even more; what makes the micro-arena proposal so apt is that it would put accessible and Covid-safer venues within everybody’s reach, rather than those venues that have survived Covid remaining concentrated in metropolitan centres. If some party added to this a proposal for a “cultural voucher” as part of social assistance, to be spent on a local cultural product of any kind, they’d be addressing both demand-side and supply-side problems in the live music market.

Improving the regulatory and consultation frameworks around zoning is vital. This does not mean a DA and ActionSA-style cutting of red tape. Rather, it entails monitoring the impact of shifts in property prices and the activities of redevelopers and rentiers – and where necessary intervening – so that rising rents and gentrification don’t become exclusionary barriers, and diverse, accessible and affordable entertainment districts can be sustained. That goes along with better night-time parking provisions, better night-time transport, and much more.

In fact, the glaring omission from all the manifestos – including the EFF’s – is any acknowledgment of the existence and needs of the night-time economy, which matters for the economic life of all municipalities, large and small, and which has suffered in all respects from the impact of Covid. (For policy detail on all this, see the proposals here: http://www.concertssa.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Concerts-SA-It-Starts-with-a-Heartbeat-Single-Page-Lo-Res-Version3.pdf )

Don’t hold your breath for these local government elections to breathe fresh life into local music. On this showing, most of the parties you might vote for aren’t even aware it matters.

Martha Mdenge and all the history we don’t know

Martha Mdenge (l), Hazel Futha (centre), Bloke Modisane (r) in a chilly Europe.

A couple of weeks back, I wrote about how little we still know about our jazz history, in a context where there is little documentation and traces and memories are disappearing fast. The work of research students racing against time to put the remaining fragments together is precious; the SASRIM conference showcased some of it .

And then I came across a stark example of my own.

Not too many people today have heard of Martha Mdenge, even as a singer. Of course, the ever-wonderful Electric Jive blogspot has discussed her smoky contralto voice whenever it crops up on a reissue (eg here http://electricjive.blogspot.com/2010/09/music-was-born-in-africa-jazz.html ), and knowledgeable critics such as Bongani Madondo have alluded to her in passing (eg here https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-02-23-thoko-ndlozi-the-healjoy-sisterhood/ ). She was credited by Hugh Masekela as author of the classic Mgewundini on his album Sixty.  

Her name, however, isn’t as well-known as  the late Miriam Makeba (of course), Dorothy Masuku or Thandi Klaasen. 

But I wasn’t even looking for Mdenge when this treasure-hunt started. I was trying to track what was, for a time, Dudu Pukwana’s Afro-pop project, Assegai in terms of the material they were recording and the evolution of their sound.

And then I came across a cluster of compositions on Assegai’s 1971 Zimbabwe album https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hnvWlNIB6Q  credited to one “M. Mdenge”. At first, I wasn’t sure it could be the same singer, who belonged to a generation senior to Pukwana, and who had left for London playing MaNgidi with the King Kong cast in 1961 (and returned to Orlando East in 1996). Surely it wasn’t her contributing half the tracks to a psychedelic Afro-rock album in the ‘70s?

But it was.

There were close to a dozen South African tracks before she left the country – including I Walk the Empty Streets, Sondela https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArSM5KfRGZs , Nomacala,  and Ekuseni https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZumCIBsv34

Overseas, there was the Assegai work; the composition Quba for Island Records’ eclectic outfit Jade Warrior (who had toured with Assegai because they shared the same management) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkcMvKqyOyE ; Come Again, re-visioned on Julian Arguelles’ 2015 album Let It Be Told with the Frankfurt Radio Bigband https://bashorecords.com/product/let-it-be-told/  – and quite possibly more; the Discogs website remains the best source for this kind of information, but it doesn’t claim to be complete and comprehensive.

That’s already the kind of reputation as a songwriter that merits a higher profile, not to mention that Mdenge also had a reputation as a fine actress and voice artist, as well as a singer. Janet Suzman, who worked with her at the Market Theatre in Brecht’s The Good Woman of Sharkville, described her performance as one that “used to bring the house down with its exaggerated vocal flourishes and its inherent mockery of ‘posh’ white talk…Directors dream of such a find…[she was] one of the grandest old ladies I have had the privilege to work with” – but also noted, in the same 2011 article in the UK Independent https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/arts-the-three-most-crucial-things-for-a-play-relocation-relocation-and-relocation-1292200.html that Mdenge had just at that date suffered the amputation of both legs. And that’s the last media reference to her I can find.

Even Mdenge’s earlier life is poorly documented.

As usual , the only profile is in the invaluable A Common Hunger to Sing, https://www.amazon.com/Common-Hunger-Sing-Tribute-1950-1990/dp/0795700644  where ZB Molefe interviewed her at length.

Mdenge was born in Cape Town in 1931, moved to Joburg with her family as a child, b Listening to the jazz singers on the Voice of America and an apprenticeship with Peter Rezant’s Merry Blackbirds led later to a semi-pro career while she worked first as a hospital administrator and later a journalist on the Bantu World – and eventually to becoming a hit singer with songs such as E-Jozi Kumnandi before joining the King Kong touring cast.

But Molefe interviewed her in 1993 only as a singer; her stage, voice and composing work aren’t even mentioned. There’s the customary sensitive photograph from Mike Mzileni – and that, apart from the picture accompanying this blog, are the only images I can find.

Another lost piece of history. No official accolades or acknowledgments. A remarkable, noteworthy career: powerful singer, journalist; internationally acknowledged composer; actress – and all we have are these shards of record and memory.

Am I the only person who finds this tragic – and who weeps for how much more cultural history there is out there that we may never recover? 

Pops Mohamed and Dave Reynolds San Dance soundtrack: kora and Kalahari harps

South Africans first saw Richard Wicksteed’s documentary  SanDance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr7s9vq2tCg at last year’s Encounters Documentary Film Festival – but it’s been aired and praised far more widely than that. SanDance, which uses the annual Kuru Dance Festival in Botswana as the peg for telling a far less exoticised than usual story of Southern Africa’s First People, won Best Feature Film at the 2020 Paris Film Festival, as well as a Bucharest Film Award and an Accolade Global Film Competition award in California. Popular demand won it an extended screening at the African Human Rights Film Festival.

Most accounts of the San people rely on romantic tropes of age-old mysticism. SanDance explores spiritual traditions, but the film grounds what is happening to the San people and their culture in the experiences of colonialism, displacement and war.

Though the traditions are indeed historic, they haven’t – like any traditions – “been like that forever”. Rather, they have evolved over time in response to changing circumstances. Inherited community knowledge of practical desert survival, for example, was refined and developed as relentless land-grabbing pressures – from colonialists and dominant cattle-farming groups – pushed the San further and further onto inhospitable terrain.

That more clear-eyed narrative was one reason the film impressed juries. The others, though were the agency it afforded its San narrators, its visual beauty, and its soundtrack.

In fact, SanDance had two layers of soundtrack. At front of ear was the musicianship on diverse instruments of the San musicians themselves. But running below that as a ribbon of sound, tying scenes and interviews together, was an ‘undertrack’ composed and played by multi-instrumentalists Dave Reynolds and Pops Mohamed. Often, the two layers entwined in magical ways.

Now that undertrack has emerged as a soundtrack album, available from Bandcamp https://davereynolds.bandcamp.com/album/sandance-the-soundtrack in just over ten days time on October 15.

Dave Reynolds (l) & Pops Mohamed (r)

The two musicians are longtime collaborators, drawn together by a passion for non-Western instruments and particularly (but not exclusively) those from the African continent. Reynolds is best- known for playing steelpans, but on this recording we hear him on a few guitars too, including the 10-string harp guitar and the Paraguayan harp (That first-named looks set to be 2021’s trending instrument, particularly given the pioneering work of Yasmin Williams https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaVLTYPdMvE ) Mohamed plays mainly kora, on which he’s developed a style that honours the instrument’s Senegambian roots, but also draws in his own more contemporary string ideas. Guests include violinist Suki Antonia, vocalist Gloria Bosman, Chris Tokalon on bansuri flute, drummer/percussionist Frank Paco and bassist Sylvain Baloubeta. Integral to the concept are San poets, singers and players of the traditional gcwashe harp.   

So how does this music stand up without the film’s stunning cinematography? Pretty well, actually. Instrumental diversity makes possible densely layered textures with their own beauty, standing as metaphor for the multiple meanings of San poetry. But the lyricism of the two composers’ melodies is often the top layer, creating, for example, the eminently hum-able Richard and John  and the groove-led Kahlamba Moon.

But not always: Journey in Time is, of course, a musicians’ pun: another double-layer alluding both to the longevity of San tradition and the games instrumentalists play with tempi. Most powerful is The Last Ggcwashe Players, a lament for a vanishing music skill vocalised by Bosman, n/aokxao /ai!ae and //uce/ui.

Botswana’s Kuru Dance Festival

Mohamed and Reynolds, and, no doubt, now the movie too, have their own fans, for whom this release will be an automatic must-buy. But appealing melodies, a mesh of surprising textures and the undeservedly little-known instrumental sounds of the San musicians themselves should make this release attractive for other listeners too. It’s a different sonic journey to the one on film, but in very much the same spirit: respect for the cosmology and beliefs of its sources infused with awareness of the very earth(l)y – and still ongoing – struggles and celebrations of real people in real (and threatened) communities.