Sweet and soulful, funny and frank, Gloria Bosman Live has it all

Some fans Gloria Bosman will win for her new album, Live – due out at month-end – might not yet have been born when her first, Tranquility https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwWQ__QYbLk appeared in 1999.

They won’t remember the intimate concerts at the old Bassline where an unassuming (sometimes barefoot) twenty-something ignored sequined stereotypes and refused to be confined within ‘jazz’, ‘Afro-soul’ (or any other ) genre boxes, dazzling us instead with vocal power, timing and command over her songs

That early, low-key stage presence may have fooled some audience members into assuming the music emerged naturally. But Mofolo-born, Pimville-raised Bosman was an opera graduate of TUT. She didn’t flaunt her academic understanding on stage, but her ability had been polished by intensive study and hard work. From the start, she was also composing, writing lyrics, arranging and taking a hand in production, and those roles have grown over the years since.  

Not counting compilations, Live will be Bosman’s seventh album, after Tranquility, The Many Faces of...(2001), Stop & Think (2002), Nature Dances (2003), Emzini (2006) and Letters from the Heart (2010).

In the recording gap since Letters... she hasn’t been idle. Theatre, cabaret and corporate performances, motivational work, board memberships, teaching, gospel and even Afrikaans song have all been elements in her career mix. She admits, though, that it’s become harder, in vastly changed industry conditions, to bring out albums as often as she’d hope.

“We come from the era of record labels. It all became a long process of finding one’s footing as an independent artist and learning how to run your business. It gets tricky when the recording bill is your responsibility and you still have to keep food on the table… I watched and learned from the young ones; their courage gave me flight.”

Emerging young artists also create a highly competitive environment. So there’s also, Bosman says, a need to “rebrand oneself in order to remain relevant.” Fortunately, “I’ve always been afraid of being stagnant; thus I’ve remained a scholar.”

So, what’s new in these ten tracks and 90-odd minutes of Live and what will we greet as familiar?

Bosman has clearly been studying carefully what’s happening on the current jazz scene. Her band for this outing, as well as again including Rob Watson’s perfectly judged drum presence, features some of the hottest newer names. She says she’s excited by the possibilities offered by her horn line: Lwanda Gogwana on brass and Sisonke Xonti on reeds. Bosman “loves the way the reedman keeps it light… never going unnecessarily dark.” Xonti gets space for some fierce improvisation on Ukholil’unomama, and Bosman picks that fierceness up in her own subsequent whooping, panting vocalese. And you can hear, when she credits the solo, how knocked out she’s been by Gogwana’s subtle, moving horn journey on Thandabazali.

Keyboardist and music director/co-producer Ludwe Danxa and guitarist Nathan Carolus  were recruited in Cape Town. Carolus’s sound is rooted in contemporary jazz; he has more traditional chops too and shows them on Ukhulil’unomama and Mbombela. On basses is Dalisu Ndlazi, definitely the instrument’s rising star: “It’s such a gift to find a bassist able to keep such a distinct sound, moving between double bass and electric, with so much ease,” Bosman says. “The sound never dies down; it’s a beautiful experience.” Ndlazi gets extended solo space on Talk Shop in the Morning, where his strings resonate with precision and grace.

It’s a new band, then, and, apart from three tracks reprised from Nature Dances, material not recorded before.

The reprises are of iconic Bosman songs: Mbombela, Let it Rain and Play Me the Love Songs – but with coats of fresh paint. Mbombela builds to a sweaty, express-train party number that’s destined to get everybody on the dancefloor; Love Songs weaves in a miniature masterclass on jazz song history.

But what about the singing? Good singers, like good wines, almost always improve as they mature and Bosman is no exception. Her voice, unsurprisingly, has more depth and gutsiness than it had in 1999. She’s always possessed an impressive palette of extended vocal techniques: growling, purring, ululating and shaping grainy textured noise alongside liquid, melodious notes. The choices she makes about deploying all this are consistently the smart ones.

That’s particularly true when she scats. Scatting is integral to the popular idea of what “jazz singing” is, but in the wrong hands it can feel like going through the motions. Bosman never forgets it isn’t just a technical exercise: the scat needs to be grounded in the spirit of its song.

All those talents were already present in a youthful form in 1999 – they’ve grown with every recording and show since, gaining strength and depth.

That 1990s Gloria, though, was quite a serious young person; between the songs came simply straightforward announcements. Over the years since, she’s developed a far more self-assured presence as she stalks the stage conversing with her audience. Depending on the material, she can whisper soft and sweet – as on the tender, grandmotherly hug of Lisakhanya – or shout, boisterous and blunt. [I Want to] Get to Know You Better is a strutting, undisguised pick-up lyric, its groove driven hard by Carolus and Ndlazi;[We Can] Talk Shop in the Morning a frank, witty reflection on making love.

Live puts Bosman’s current powerful stage persona on record for the first time. As she says, “I found out a lot of people haven’t experienced me live,” and she hopes it’ll remind people how special live gigs are. But this show of strength doesn’t produce only good music carried by knockout performers but, implicitly, a powerful feminist album as well, demonstrating how music creates and amplifies solidarity from shared human experience. At points, Bosman unlocks from her audience the sound that terrifies misogynists the most: women’s joyful laughter.

Having achieved her half-century and the accompanying life benchmarks, the vocalist sounds very comfortable in her skin on this return to studio. If you have those way-back-nineties memories, Live will be a welcome rediscovery. If you don’t, it’ll be a revelation, from a woman who has been a pathbreaker for far more daughters in song than you might have suspected.

***Live launches on digital platforms on Feb 28 (I’ll post links when I have them) with hard-copy CDs available later. On 19 March, Bosman presents the material at Joburg’s Untitled Basement in Braamfontein; on 31 March at the Doppio Zero upstairs jazz room in Rosebank. The Joburg shows will be followed by tour gigs in Durban and Cape Town.  

Percy Zvomuya’s When Three Sevens Clash scores a literary hit

I confess gladly: I still miss Staffrider. In fact, I miss all the cultural publications, short- and long-lived, that flourished during the struggle era, from the MEDU Newsletter to the culture pages of trade union newspapers. They managed to be at the same time subversively irreverent and serious as your life. They cocked a snook at commercial genre labels and exclusionary definitions of culture. And they asserted a joyous eclecticism where not only did poetry, visual art and music talk to one another, but they all talked and listened to the lives of the people.

There’s not enough of that around today. Lamestream media focus on the commercial and commodified. Serious cultural publications such as the JRB https://johannesburgreviewofbooks.com/  do a great job reviewing books, but stay soberly within their boundaries. (There are, noticeably, far more platforms for books and literary criticism than any other art form.) Higher education institutions write and publish, but inside their own kinds of writer/reader walls. Bloggers pick up the joy and reject the boundaries but – let’s be honest – for every one that makes a reader’s heart sing (and they certainly exist) there are too many more shallow, un-researched, indigestible reads.

Staffrider stopped publishing in 1993. Community colleges and cultural groups and independent publishing initiatives worked to fill the gap for as long as funding held out, but as donors dropped out of South Africa faster than figs off the tree, the hope that government would effectively pick up the slack wasn’t realised.

No-boundaries arts writing initiatives since then, like Chimurenga, launched in 2002 https://chimurengachronic.co.za/ have often been regional or pan-African, and that’s no accident. Older in ostensible independence than SA, cultural workers in other African countries were already riding the rails of new decolonisation struggles.

So it’s no surprise that a new (and, for now, once-off) literary mag, centred on the work of a musician and packed with intelligent, challenging discourse, has its roots in Zimbabwe and its branches across the continent.

When Three Sevens Clash (Mbonga Editions), edited by Percy Zvomuya, hails the 77th birthday of exiled Zimbabwean musical prophet Thomas Mukanya Mapfumo with a riff on a Joseph Hill album title. It’s a call to resist the degradation of environment and ideas, to recall prophets passed and to think, acutely and elegantly, about who, how and where we are.

The 64-page, 13-essay collection visits Mukanya’s work both directly and indirectly. The central, holding essay by Musaemura Zimunya tracks the life and output of the artist, linking these to the historical events of his times and interrogating their human, political and spiritual power.

That’s backed by novelist Farai Mudzingwa’s beautifully evocative history of one of Mukanya’s places: Harare’s Seven Miles Hotel. That, in turn, links to another equally evocative spatial reminiscence: South African photojournalist Rafs Mayet’s photo-essay on the1988 Harare Human Rights Now Concert. That loops us back to another Harari – the South African band – and how their trip to then-Salisbury when they were still called The Beaters a dozen years before helped revolutionise their musical ideas, as drawn out by Atiyyah Khan’s sensitive interviewing of veteran band members.

That tangle of conceptual links and loops is emblematic of the kind of publication Three Sevens is. There’s another set around family, migrancy and identity, with a starting point in Muyanka’s early stint with the Hallelujah Chicken Run Band, whose members had roots in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique. Marko Phiri’s essay on that has its branches entwined with Tawanda Madzonga’s further reflections on national identity as (mis)perceived through accent, on the fluidities and rigidities of gender identity as Rutendo Chabikwa remembers one of her uncles, and on the role of a quite remarkable (and to me at least previously unknown) 1958 Black music festival in asserting African identity.

There are many more underpinning connections between essays – but I’ll leave you to spot those for yourselves.

Editor Percy Zvomuya

Beyond the power of the contributions to make us think, though, Three Sevens also looks good and reads well. Ricky Hunt’s clean design and typographical choices make the most of the A5 size. The photo-essays carry real emotional impact; the faces of KB Mpofu’s artisanal miners asserting their pride in their work as well as its degraded environment and standing in contrast to the routinely stereotyped and demonising SA media portrayals of “zama-zamas”.

And the writing is just gorgeous. Some credit for that goes to editors Zvomuya (whose editorial is much more: a meditative essay in its own right), Geraldine Mukumbi and Katlego Tapala for selection and care with copy. But mainly it’s on the contributors. They know and feel what they want to say and declare it clearly, without the hedging and jargonising that weighs down too much academic arts writing. Listen to Brian Chikwava’s In Search of the Lost Riddim, invoking the power of some now unobtainable Blacks Unlimited recordings:

“… we see new horizons beyond which the song persists, even after the physical object has vanished.”(p.56)

For now, When Three Sevens Clash is a once-off for Mukanya’s anniversary. You can find it in Johannesburg at Love Books https://lovebooks.co.za/, Book Circle Capital https://bookcapital.co.za/ and Bridge Books https://bridgebooks.co.za/ , at District Six https://www.districtsix.co.za/shop/ and Clarke’s Bookshop https://clarkesbooks.co.za/  in Cape Town, and at The Orange Elephant in Bulawayo https://www.facebook.com/theorangeelephantbulawayo/ and Victoria Falls. Online, try www.bookfish.co.za  . But it would be great if this particular physical object didn’t vanish, but instead established another platform for intelligent writing not only about music but about all the tendrils that music extends into every aspect of our lives, and all the ways we reach back.

POSTSCRIPT: For more cultural writings from the Struggle era, the great news is that the archive of Botswana-based MEDU Art Ensemble – though still a collection in progress – is now up and accessible to researchers.  

Two new albums from South African jazz teachers

So many new albums landed in the final quarter of 2022 that reviewers (including me) are still running to catch up. Among them are a brace from two distinguished jazz teachers: bassist Marc Duby and reedman Mike Rossi.

Duby’s Happen(dot)stance https://music.apple.com/zm/album/happen-stance/1647203349 features an ensemble that harks back to his Durban outfit of the 1970s & early 80s, More Garde than Avant. Duby – now with a day job as a professor of musicology – periodically wheels More Garde… out to bring a collection of musical friends together; you can catch a an earlier edition playing at the Orbit in 2016 here: https://www.facebook.com/theorbitjazzclub/videos/marc-dubys-more-garde-than-avant-in-orbit-with-a-band-featuring-some-great-jazz-/1051524281590509/

This outing features a smaller ensemble than 2016: Duby on bass, Godfrey Mgcina on drums, Hugo de Waal on guitar, John Davies on flugelbone (no, that’s not a typo: it’s the smaller instrument sometimes dubbed a ‘marching trombone’) Yusuf Justin Holcroft on reeds, Sydney Mavundla on trumpet and John Fresk on keys.

That (dot) in the title matters, since several musicians have released dotless albums with the same name, including Mark Buselli, Augustin Lehfuss and, most recently, another South African bassist, Shane Cooper in 2021, with entrancing soundbooks of found and improvised sounds.

The 11 compositions of Duby’s album (the whole outing runs to 80 minutes) are set firmly in the international contemporary jazz mainstream. The mood is mostly reflective and lyrical, with intelligent soloing and empathetic ensemble work – you can hear that these are friends who’ve worked together before and know each others’ moods and sonic shapes. Although there are seven names on the cover, the core of the music is the quartet of bass, drums, piano and reeds. (Davies, who used to be the ubiquitous ‘man with the hat’ on outings like this, makes us wait through several numbers for The Climb to find a stretched out ‘bone solo.)

As you’d expect, there’s accomplished playing from everybody. The easy, lush swing of Holcroft on The Luxury of Choice and the sensitive feel for space of Fresk on Manneland stick in the memory, but there’s way more.

Duby’s presence emerges initially as composer and discreet rhythm accompanist; his bass voice becoming more prominent as the tracks unfold. For me, the high point was his bass voice on the gently catchy Seagull. But you can’t talk about bass without also considering its partnership with drums, and if there was a surprise on the album it was Mgcina. He’s another of those “elder statesmen’ and “stalwarts” who’s always around but rarely written about: a drummer who never intrudes but always facilitates brilliantly. If a first listen to the album inevitably focuses on the soloists and compositions, each subsequent hearing reminds us how much the whole edifice depends on Mgcina’s subtle grounding textures. The witty, twisty, slightly surrealist concluding ensemble march, Le Monocle de Mon Oncle,  lets him and everybody else shine.

Another collection of music teachers populate Mike Rossi’s Roots and Routes: https://music.apple.com/gb/album/roots-routes/1654039322 not only the UCT reed prof as leader and main composer, but Mike Campbell on bass, William Haubricht on ‘bone, Blake Hellaby on piano and Kevin Gibson on drums, with Darren English on trumpet and Lilavan Gangen on percussion.

The thematic unifier for the dozen numbers here is Rossi’s travels and encounters (musical and personal), as the album title suggests. The collection revisits three of Rossi’s Italy-inspired melodies, which have always been among my favourites of his compositions, as well as dropping in on Japan and the Rugby World Cup, and paying tribute to Madiba, Bheki Mseleku, Wayne Shorter and – in a tangibly personal, emotional tune – old colleague Darius Brubeck who, at the time For Darius was written, was battling severe Covid. Cape Town gets its nod in Cape Town Jump, dedicated in the liners to “Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath and the Blue Notes”. However Dudu Pukwana, composer of the Mra theme on which the number rests, is oddly not named in the dedication.

Again, there’s highly accomplished playing on both solos and in ensemble work from everyone concerned, including the leader on a dazzling variety of reeds; again, you can hear how these are players who’ve worked closely together over time and get what the composer and their bandmates want. Hellaby’s solo on For Darius is a particularly sweet nod towards how the song’s subject swings. Brubeck the composer also gets props in the beautifully constructed and joyful closer, Lion at the Bar where, again, Hellaby shines.

It’s also lovely to hear English – these days, often wowing audiences in original contexts outside the mainstream – demonstrating again that he can talk this jazz language too, for example in his witty conversation with Haubricht on Cookin’ in Kanazawa.

As a postscript to this column, the Theatre and Dance Alliance is looking forward (perhaps it’s wishful thinking?) to the prospect of a new Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture in the upcoming Cabinet reshuffle. The have issued a media release explaining why we need a Minister who is accountable, accessible, informed, proactive and involved. Is anybody listening?

Eldred Schilder’ Tenziah: no more fretting at the back of the stage

Look up writing about the bass, and you’ll find a fair amount about how it’s the ‘engine’ of an ensemble. Trouble is, just as some drivers trust their mechanic and never look under the bonnet, so some jazz audiences never think about the sound that makes the music so damn compelling. When it gets quiet, because the bass is soloing, that’s when they grab the opportunity to talk.

In the current South African jazz era, it’s been Herbie Tsoaeli who’s been the highest-profile standard-bearer, reminding audiences how much that person at the back of the stage, dancing with a hefty wooden companion, matters. Contemporaneous and and following, a bunch of other thrilling bassists, formerly stereotyped as ‘rhythm’ or ‘side’ players (think Lex Futshane, Mlungisi Gegana, Shane Cooper, more – and we’re still waiting for that album from Dalisu Ndlazi) have stepped forward to demonstrate how skillfully they can also compose, arrange and lead.

Most recent is Eldred Schilder, scion of one of Cape Town’s most distinguished jazz dynasties, who launches his debut as leader, Tenziah, at the Nassau Centre at 3 this afternoon, Sunday Feb 5.

Born in 1959 and growing up in Harfield near Claremont, Eldred Schilder is the child of revered pianist Richard Schilder, nephew to Tony, Chris (Ibrahim Khalil Shihab) and Phillip (Philly) Schilder, and cousin to Hilton. So Eldred’s exposure to music was early and intensive. From a very young age, he picked up facility on a number of instruments but, as he told music writer Warren Ludski, (https://warrenludskimusicscene.com/2021/04/16/eldred-schilder-thinks-its-time-to-stand-tall-with-his-2m-double-bass/): “I think the bass chose me.”

Initially, he played electric bass, and since the mid-1970s has been a familiar figure on the city’s scene, frequently working with cousin Hilton.

But in 2005, inspired by his uncle Philly, whose brilliant jazz career was cut short by mental illness (you can hear him on the Chris Schilder/Mankunku outing, Spring), Eldred bought a big, beautiful contrebass. He’s been playing, and writing for, both instruments since.

Tenziah is a brief album, only 7 tracks and 34 minutes. But it works wonderfully as a showcase for the bassist’s gifts not only as player, but as composer too. The compositions range from the spiky, helter-skelter modal runs of the title track, through the nostalgic tribute Mr P to the classic, Trane-ish (or maybe Mankunku-ish?) explorations of African Blue.

Eldred isn’t a flashy player. Often, he’s content to be the perfectly-judged propulsive presence behind a solo. When he does that, we hear his voice as a composer via his partners in music. On sax, Jed Petersen, displays impressive versatility. He’s perfectly in-period on African Blue; sweetly lyrical on Mr P, urgent and sinewy on the bow-introduced Beatz. Another younger player, drummer Damian Kameneth, resists the temptation to overpower the music with flourishes and rolls; his quiet, clever rhythms provide the perfect frame for what are highly personal, contemplative tunes.  

On piano, we hear three talents: Andrew Ford, Hilton Schilder and George Werner. Ford’s imaginative explorations enrich the title track and highlight the intriguing progressions of Honey Sponge. Hilton and Eldred are perfectly in synch on the yearning Remembrance, with the contrebass a comforting support to the rich emotions of the keys. One of the most beautiful passages is on African Blue, where Eldred’s walking line in conversation with Werner’s piano becomes much more than a walk in its subtle embroideries.

We have to wait for the final track, The Two Richards, though, for a stretched-out bass solo. It’s only 90 seconds long, but gives us everything we hope for from the instrument: textures you can almost touch as the strings vibrate and the heart of the melody sings out.

Eldred Schilder has paid his dues for too long at the back of the stage. Let’s hope Tenziah heralds more gigs as leader, and some of these compositions getting picked up by other players and entering our standard repertoire.

Next week, music from another bassist, Marc Duby. And very soon, a long-awaited album from Gloria Bosman…