Tonight Thursday Nov 24 at 6 sees the online launch of the video accompanying Tumi Mogorosi’s Group Theory: Black Music album. For more details and a link to the video, see:
And if you aren’t heading to the Sandton Convention Centre at 1700 on Saturday Nov 26, you can catch some of Ndududuzo Makhathini’s performance at the EFG London Jazz Festival, on the BBC Radio 3 Jazz JtoZ series, details here:
We’re back to “normal”* and jazz festivals are back. November 25/26 sees the return of Joburg Joy of Jazz (JoJ) live, with the Hugh Masekela Heritage Festival (Hughfest22) a week later. The first announcement for the 2023 Cape Town International Jazz Festival (CTIJF) has appeared, with vocalist Judith Sephuma as festival announcement face.
Let’s reflect on where such festivals are headed.
Before 2020, Joy of Jazz was always the reliable place to find artists you already knew in a somewhat grander presentation. Cape Town was the place where you were more likely to discover the new, unexpected, and occasionally totally off-the-wall. That didn’t make one “better” or “worse” than the other; they simply had different curatorial identities.
Thandi Ntuli – at Hughfest22
Lockdown has changed that. Two-years-plus of no live shows means every event organiser has far less money. Skyrocketing airfare costs – plus hopefully some concern for environmentally devastating flying addiction – has exacerbated that constraint. Both festivals will foreground new and old South African music.
That’s likely to be one of the gains of the new normal. In the past, certain festivals regularly gave world-class South African artists less prominence – and less reward – than their overseas peers. The predominance of SA artists will inevitably foreground more new, challenging jazz – because that’s what we produce.
Alongside the familiar and already solidly radio-mainstream at this year’s Joy of Jazz –Ringo Madlingozi, Wouter Kellerman, Jimmy Dludlu, Thandiswa Mazwai – you’ll find new work: the always-innovative Lwanda Gogwana; Linda Sikhakhane in a trio with Afrika Mkhize (still mis-spelled online as ‘Afro’), Benjamin Jephta and Sphelelo Mazibuko; Bokani Dyer presenting his eagerly awaited Radio Sechaba project; Msaki; Gloria Bosman’s new all-woman band; and Moreira Chonguica, reviewed here last week.
All those artists already engage with heritage. Underlining that side of the programme, there are two tributes: to Tshepo Tshola, appropriately led by Lesotho musician Bhudaza Mapefane; and (long overdue) to trumpeter and teacher Johnny Mekoa, a horn summit led by veteran reedman Khaya Mahlangu. There’s a concert focusing on the popular music legacy of Sipho ‘Hotstix’ Mabuse, led by him. The cross-fertilisations of African regional heritage are reflected in Mahube; and music scholar Dr Sello Galane leads his Free Kiba Band.
That’s just a small sample of names: the full programme is available at https://www.joyofjazz.co.za/program. What it demonstrates is that drawing on the music resources of this country and its region can create a dazzlingly diverse programme. Not everybody will be enchanted by everything – but that’s the whole point of a multi-stage festival: you can choose.
In that context, it’s disappointing that the first announcement for CTIJF 2023 (17/18 March: the lineup isn’t out yet) makes it clear the two consistently most interesting stages – Molelekwa and Bassline – have gone. Bassline was the hip-hop hub, where future Grammy winners and local and international flow subversives made themselves known. Molelekwa was where you could spot the best-kept jazz and global music secrets and rising talents. Since the announcement, I’ve talked to several music-writer colleagues from here and overseas. All recall their best music discovery moments happening at Molelekwa.
Judith Sephuma – face of the CTIJF 23 announcement
We’re left with the two stages with the worst acoustics: Kippies (holds lots of punters; many of whom don’t – or can’t – listen) and the outdoor Mannenberg (what you hear depends on which way the wind’s blowing). Plus the acoustically superb Rosies, with its R20 seat supplement: a wonderful sit-down concert venue, but somewhat less hospitable than the stages we’ve lost for less conventional small acts.
The Masekela Heritage Festival on December 4 at Nirox features Hotstix and another JoJ artist, Leomile, once more, a tribute to the late poet Don Mattera, vocalists Gugu Shezi and Mandisi Dyantyis, pianist Thandi Ntuli and veteran guitar maestro Themba Mokoena.
That latter kind of scale looks far more like the future of festivals. There’s no clear curatorial line beyond the broad ‘great African artists’ for Hughfest22. But in principle, bringing together half a dozen artists allows the deliberate thematic curation of a programme for a smaller but more focused, dedicated audience and a more manageable cost.
That’s cost to organisers. All three festivals mentioned above will cost attendees money that may not be so manageable: Hughfest, R500; JoJ starting at R750 for a single day; CTIJF R1,146 ditto – all carrying travel, possibly accommodation, food and drink expenses on top. All three are sited at venues that might be perceived as exclusionary: two convention centres – JoJ’s Sandton has a particularly brutalist, keep-out vibe – and a sculpture park way out of town, with pricey bars and restaurants.
At a time when joblessness is at an all-time high, and disposable income tighter than tight, let’s not kid ourselves: such events predominantly serve an elite. Yet South African jazz has always been fertilised by a much broader people’s audience, as anybody who attended the Cosmopolitan Collective event at Wits last weekend knows (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=080wQqnYd0U).
It’s heartening that South African musicians can again earn once-a-year income from a festival or two. And nobody grudges those who can afford them great festival experiences.
Growing audiences, however – the more important demand-side development vital for the longer term prosperity of the music sector – needs more access to music. That means more music in schools and more, smaller-scale, live events closer to where more people live, with tickets subsidised one way or another.
If that doesn’t happen, the big festivals can only retreat further and further into irrelevance.
(*Strictly speaking, ‘normal’ means there are close to the same number of daily reported Covid cases there were this time last year, when official precautions were still in place. It’s just nobody’s talking about them anymore.)
East, West, home’s best. Studying music at a South African university has helped to open doors and build creative networks for many jazz musicians from across the African continent. But sometimes it’s the warmth and intellectual riches of home that carry their creativity to the next level.
Take Mozambican saxophonist Moreira Chonguiça, a music and ethnomusicology graduate of UCT way back then. He relocated back home 11 years ago and it’s been five years since his last (seventh) album, M&M with Manu Dibangu https://moreirachonguica.bandcamp.com/album/m-m-moreira-chongui-a-manu-dibango, the one that brought him to broader world attention.
Now an eighth Chonguiça release, Sounds of Peacehttps://moreirachonguica.bandcamp.com/album/sounds-of-peace-new-album-just-released has appeared. And notwithstanding the truly lovely music he made in the company of Dibangu – how could anyone not? – Sounds of Peace has to be his most musically interesting and powerful work to date.
Chonguiça had already established himself as a substantial jazz voice when he was still based in South Africa. He rapidly built a following for his warm, full reed sound, appealing compositions and vibrant live shows with The Moreira Project. Five albums (and multiple nominations and awards) ensued.
Back in Mozambique, he’s been making more music live and in-studio, teaching and energising music projects and festivals, as well as continuing to study the music traditions of his birthplace. Covid (he was hospitalised for a week) and lockdown – as they did for many musicians everywhere – forced a period of introspection and exploration. Out of that came Sounds of Peace.
The message of the album title is not merely a simple, unarguable, “let’s not fight”. It’s about making peace with self and overcoming self-doubt. That’s the metaphor that informs the album’s first single and video Hosi/King, as he told broadcaster Nicky B https://iono.fm/e/1249069
But it’s also about making peace with the diversity that has always characterised community life in Africa, something the album enacts as it draws from musical traditions across Mozambique and from languages including Changana, Makonde and Makhuwa. It’s a vibrant rejection of narrow regionalism.
Thematically, some of this revisits the territory of the reedman’s 2011 album Khanimambohttps://soundcloud.com/moreira-chonguica/sets/khanimambo . But the approach in 2022 is far more intricate. The sounds that emerge as you listen – layered, textured and intricately woven – include spoken conversation from men, women and children (and between instruments); the chants of traditional performance from the excellent Xindiro dance company; and the melodies of folk-song. All these segue back and forth into laid-back contemporary grooves and all flavours of jazz. In my favourite, Retardando, a stately walking bassline from the ever-solid Helder Gonzago weaves in and out of vocalcall and response and Chonguiça’s sax wailing almost Kansas City-style.
Retardando, says Chonguiça, is about the need, post-pandemic, to slow down from the fast lane and savour life around us. Like Jonas Gwangwa’s Hurry Up And Wait, it’s one of those tunes that toys with a listener’s rhythmic comfort zone, transforming a tricky theme from uptempo to spiritual by periodically hitting the brakes. It’s also an impressive demonstration of Chonguiça’s instrumental control; all these rich, intriguing ideas are grounded in a foundation of highly accomplished musicianship.
The Bandcamp album lacks a personnel list, which is a pity. As well as Gonzaga’s bass, there’s some gorgeous singing and tight, joyous instrumental work from an ensemble drawn from the Morejazz Big Band that Chonguiça has been developing as a mentor, and from other traditional performers like the Xindiro company. It would be nice to be able to commend a singer here and a keyboardist, guitarist or percussionist there.
Xindiro feature on the video for Hosi, clearly having great fun with marching chants, stick-fights, impressive flic-flac somersaults over barrels of flame and the other moves of xigubu dance. (Where South Africans might spot some affinity to indlamu; truly there is unity in diversity).
In how that number is arranged and choreographed, we see Chonguiça the ethnomusicologist, sharply aware that tradition and modernity exist on a continuum: the former not static; the latter not springing fully-formed from nowhere.
The album is a satisfyingly long listen, offering 13 tracks and well over an hour of music. The tracks are diverse, from folkloric to free and from a classic ballad like Mamana Wanga/My Mother to the infectious Afro-Latin-mbaqanga of the closer, Songo. The meditative Myadivya Imumu/ Tears from the Soil offers environmental reflections as Chonguiça’s meditative sax and two singers apologise to the ancestors for the scars of extractive mining. Jo’burgers will have a chance to hear some of this material as part of Chonguiça’s set at Joy of Jazz: last of the evening on the Dinaledi Stage on Friday 25 November.
It’s been a long wait for Sounds of Peace, but definitely worth it. Chonguiça promises that this path of braiding together sonic heritage and jazz innovation has only just begun – there’s more where this album came from.
Daniel picked up the information from a Departmental RfQ (request for quotation) for activities around the government’s social cohesion programme – the kind of boring, Government Gazette-type reading that more journalists should be fine-combing, because that is where the reality behind the bloated rhetoric of speeches often lurks.
Forty “Social Cohesion Advocates” are to be shipped to Joburg for a 4-day workshop, whose required pre-reading is Spencer Johnson’s 1999 self-help book Who Moved MyCheese?. Other activities include karaoke, good dinners (of course), fitness programmes designed to be promoted subsequently to “communities” (one hopes the dinners aren’t too good) and more.
Dr Spencer Johnson got absurdly rich on his banal, self-help Cheese books. The first is now 23 years old, and in the interim the self-help genre has metastatized with thousands more similar titles, all leaning heavily on their predecessor, Dale Carnegie, evangelist for the joys of the capitalist rat-race.
The messages from all these books are uncannily similar. First, don’t be negative – even if Elon Musk has just fired you or the police are shooting with live bullets. Second, embrace change (the theme of Cheese) – even if it uproots and impoverishes your community. Third, if you want it enough, you can make it happen – just like Markus Jooste. And fourth, above all, don’t over-think things – because, heaven forbid, you might come up with an analysis of capitalism and a strategy for resistance.
There have long been suspicions that the ‘social cohesion’ peddled by DSAC today is a monstrous distortion of the principles of communal solidarity that inspired and sustained the struggle against apartheid. Then, we stuck together to fight evils and injustices. Today, people seem to be expected to cohere with the perpetrators of injustices and stop complaining about the evils being shovelled down on them. Anybody who harbours such suspicions could find all the proof they need in the reading list for this workshop.
DSAC official photo: “Say cheese!”
But there are some other challenges we might pose too. This is the South African Department of Sport, Arts and Culture. Aren’t there any inspirational African texts we might encourage community activators to read – texts that don’t convey the dumbest and most philistine of neocolonial, pro-capital messages? (You could maybe start with essays from SisonkeMsimang, or Pumla Dineo Gqola, or Trevor Ngwane or Dale McKinley.) Aren’t there any programme facilitators whose workshop processes don’t still depend on a 23-year-old text, stale even on its own reactionary landscape?
Couldn’t DSAC convene programmes that genuinely seek to engage with social cohesion, and the reasons why it is so hard to achieve – reasons like persistent official refusals to hear communities and deal with their grievances? Or the fondness of some villains in power for rather too much helping themselves?
Importantly, how much will all this rather smelly Cheese cost, and aren’t there other causes – such as the parlous state of community arts projects that genuinely bring people together – that it could be better spent on?
And, finally, if the Department is so keen on embracing change, shouldn’t it start a bit closer to home? Like, maybe, at its top?
Fezekile Reginald “Blackie” Tempi (pic: Jurgen Schadeberg)
Sad and unexpected news arrived yesterday that after a sudden illness, and on the eve of a planned trumpet summit, much loved and respected Cape Town hornman Blackie Tempi had passed away. His life is outlined in a heartfelt tribute from photographer Fanie Jason, on Jason’s Facebook page, accompanied by the photographer’s sensitive images, shot over a lifetime friendship with the musician. It’s the most comprehensive account of his life that has been published so far., although hopefully more tributes will appear in the days to come.
May Tempi’s spirit rest in peace and music. Hamba Kahle.
sisgwenjazz 