Celebrate IJD with Ababhemu and Plurism – and mourn the loss of the genius who was Mac McKenzie

For today’s International Jazz Day (IJD), it’s worth catching up on two recent releases demonstrating how seamlessly South Africa is now integrated into the international jazz world.

But it’s also worth reflecting on how little we really value our jazz heritage here at home. Within 24 hours, two great South Africans died yesterday: boxing legend Dingaan “the Rose” Thobela, and jazzman, goema innovator and orchestral composer Mac McKenzie. This morning, while media celebrated IJD, they universally paid – deserved – tributes to Thobela’s sporting prowess. Not one has yet, as I write at 7:00am today, mourned the towering loss of the latter.

The final item in the playlist below reminds you quite what a unique and brilliant talent is now gone from us.

So, let’s temper our joy as we listen to these two albums with reflections that appreciating our own jazz heritage still has quite a long way to go.

Karl-Martin Almqvist’s Ababhemu Quartet is a 50:50 affair: the Swedish reedman and Norwegian bassist Magne Thormodsæter, with Nduduzo Makhathini on piano (and contributing one composition of eight), and Ayanda Sikade on drums. Ababhemu’s 2024 The Travelers (https://karlmartinalmqvist.bandcamp.com/album/the-travelers) is a debut recording, but the culmination of a period of collaboration dating back to 2014 when the pianist invited Almqvist to Joburg. Its conscious impulse is, quite explicitly, to play “against the history of coloniality” (https://ropeadope.com/karlmartin/).

South Africans are in the majority on Swiss drummer Dominic Egli’s quintet Plurism and the outfits fifth release, Umhlangano ( https://dominicegli.bandcamp.com/album/umhlangano). Egli and bassist Raffaele Bossard are joined by trumpeter Feya Faku and reedmen Sisonke Xonti and Mthunzi Mvubu. Faku contributes one composition of this eight; another, Introspection, comes from the pens of Xonti, Bokani Dyer and Bejamin Jephta, arranged by David Cousins, while a third is based on the poetry of Sibongakonke Mama. A dedication here, too, is to internationalism, in the form of SOS Mediterranée and Sea Watch, whose Captain Rackete defied Italian maritime authorities to bring 41 shipwrecked migrants safely to port.

In character, they are of course very different albums. Exactly like their international counterparts, South African jazz players don’t only sound one way or represent only a single tradition.

The Travelers is an intense outing, deliberately exploring the spirituality shared across continents, with a very Coltraneish vibe, underlined by Almqvist’s yearning tenor voice. That area of otherwordly searching is also Makhathini’s space, and he contributes sombre, moving spoken invocations to Smangaliso (miracle) and to the title track. On his own solo, Ukubuyisana, he reminds us what a gorgeously contemplative, soulful pianist he can be when not delivering the crashing crescendos that bigger ensembles sometimes demand. As for Sikade, his sticks and brushes add gold everywhere. He’s sensitive to the patterns and nuances of each composition, and to what his co-players need. The more I hear of him, the more I wonder why his profile in this country isn’t higher. On any stage, he’s a master.

Umhlangano (gathering) is equally intense, with the focus on process: the tight, empathetic meshing and hocketing of five very distinctive instrumental voices grounded in Egli’s edgy engine room (which takes centre-stage on Children Song).

Faku is sounding literally brilliant these days: there’s a new brightness to his instrumental tone. His composition, A Pocket Full of Cherries for Mongezi, is a witty but faithful take on the approach of those two iconoclastic horn-men, with space for a knockout bass solo from Bossard. Mvubu and Xonti segue beautifully between warm, fat choruses and imaginative solos, while Kanon (which plays with both classical and jazz concepts of voices fitting together) lets flute as well as saxophones speak.

In just over an hour and a half combined, these two albums demonstrate the idiocy of borders in cultural creation – and in several other areas too. This is not “us” playing “their” music, or “them” playing “ours”. This is music from and to the world and a  fitting sermon for IJD.

And they make me wonder at why we have no place for such international cooperation in our music awards. Surely a “best cross-border collaboration” category somewhere is long overdue? Awards may have their downside (which I’ve written about at length) but work of this calibre ought to be getting recognition that transcends narrow nationalism.

https://dominicegli.bandcamp.com/album/umhlangano

Women instrumentalists on International Jazz Day: you can’t be it if you don’t see it

In a couple of weeks’ time, on April 30, it’ll be the UN-sanctified International Jazz Day. (IJD  https://jazzday.com/.)

The event had been destined for its first African host city in 2020: Cape Town. Sadly, Covid put paid to that. But it returns to Africa this year, with the host city of Tangier in Morocco. 

The programme for the international concert is an impressive one, reflecting the diversity of sources, styles and generations that make up jazz, from Gnawa drumming to avant-garde trumpet and from blues guitar to Spanish/classical harmonica. The southern African flag is held high by saxophonist Moreira Chonguica and vocalist/trumpeter Mandisi Dyantyis. You can access the concert via a YouTube stream (2023 is already up at https://www.youtube.com/@Jazzday) – and you should.

You’ll also be able to find also multiple in-country events, including in South Africa, although the UNESCO link (https://jazzday.com/events/2024/south-africa/) so far, lists only a few of those here that I know have been scheduled. Come on, organisers – this is one programme you definitely need to get with. It costs nothing to register your event and have it posted on the IJD website.

IJD is a great initiative, and the website offers all kinds of information and resources that jazz educators and promoters can draw on, as well as video of the previous global concerts. It really only falls short in one dimension – gender.

As in all previous years, the global concert bill features a minority of women musicians: six out of 31 artists; just under 20%. Over 49% of the world’s population that UN bodies such as UNESCO are supposed to represent is female. Of those six, only one, reed player and composer Lakecia Benjamin, is an instrumentalist; the rest are vocalists.

And, as you can see, the official poster at the top of this page portrays four male instrumentalists and a woman singing. (As it happens, a remarkably skinny woman in a thigh-split dress, but we really don’t need to have that conversation again, do we?)

So, in venues and education establishments all across the world that use the official poster, professional female instrumentalists are invisible, and jazz-aspirant young women are told that their only role in the genre can be to wear a pretty dress and sing.

That message was probably unintentional – although making selections for a concert bill is a 110% deliberate and intentional process. And in terms of conveying a message, a picture is worth 1000 words.

Research demonstrates that all across the world, women musicians feel marginalised, exploited and unsafe. Now, South African research – more when it’s published – backs that up too. The cumulative impact of posters such as the IJD one is to naturalise the situation: to imply that what it portrays is the only way things can and should be.

It would have been so easy to do things differently: to create silhouettes that were gender neutral, or 50% female, or even – perish the thought! – 80% female. (At which point, no doubt, the neanderthal whines about “wokeness” would have sounded loud.) But go to the IJD website, and you’ll see that quite a few events have chosen not to use that poster and to feature female instrumentalists, not only graphically as an abstract idea, but photographically: the real women already playing jazz instruments professionally in localities worldwide.

Maybe we could make a start in South Africa by – in the best jazz tradition of improvisation – riffing on that poster and using one that looks like this instead?

Poster re-visualisation: Judy Seidman

Kujenga’s In The Wake: a second album that surpasses a promising start

I completely missed the 2019 release of Cape Town collective Kujenga’s debut album, Nationality. (https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=4aEZwlQBEWg&list=OLAK5uy_kRe1SLktM-wilODoUmzU57DCc-DMzK4ps). Listening to it now, I realise that even had I heard it at that time, it probably wouldn’t have prepared me fully for their second release, In the Wake, https://kujenga.bandcamp.com/album/in-the-wake ,which launched on Sharpeville Day last month.

In 2019, the outfit was smaller – no horns – helmed by Milnerton-born bassist Zwide Ndwandwe, with most compositions by his twin brother, Olwethu and the rest of the band largely friends and neighbours.  For their story back then, see https://www.okayafrica.com/kujenga-south-african-jazz/

Nationality is well worth your ears, even now: everybody on board is a talented musician, and there’s particular strength in having such a stylistically flexible guitarist as Thane Smith, who’s clearly listened to and learned from everything from rock to Afrobeat. The compositions had an appealing, catchy lyricism. Still, it was a debut album, and – like most debuts – thus a showcase for a bit of everything, from the militant hymning of the Qhawekazi Prelude to the slightly sappy, slightly too Americanised, Rn’B of Lost With You, the edgier, more philosophical WeWe and the urgent syncopations of Let the People Sing. With a start like that, the band could have gone in a few different future directions, and if I’d heard it then I’d have filed it under “Interesting – see what they do next”.

In the Wake, plus lots of live gigging (including with mentors The Brother Moves On) is what they did next. It’s way more than just interesting.

Kujenga

The line-up is now the Ndwandwe brothers, Smith, and Skhumbuzo Qamata on drums plus brass and reeds: trumpeter Bonga Mosola, trombonist Tamsyn Freeks, and Matthew Rightford on tenor sax, with some percussion from Jerome Silengile and Riley van der Merwe.

That more diverse sonic palette with reed and brass shows off interesting arrangements  – most compositions this time are from Zwide – far better than a smaller group could. Of the ten tracks, four are in the 8-10-minute range, with space for passages of contrasting texture and mood, and growth and development from a simply stated head to a satisfying resolution.

That matters, because Kujenga (the name means ‘build’ in KiSwahili and signals the outfit’s commitment to pan-Africanism) has a very clear agenda here: to reflect on the pandemic and the post-pandemic disasters threatening humanity and to propose political solutions. (That word ‘political’ has a bad rep – but politics is much more – and more important – than waving the flag of some party or other every five years.) The way the compositions resolve often enacts a collective coming together to overcome crises.

One thing that struck me when I heard Nationality was the way some tracks evoked the feel of the South African jazz of the Bheki Mseleku /Moses Taiwa Molelekwa era: effortlessly bridging the divide between popular and conscious musics. Partly that was the idiomatic impact of many compositions originated by a pianist – but, as Zwide told Charles Leonard, (https://mg.co.za/article/2023-11-25-wake-up-and-hear-the-music/ ) such music was also what the brothers grew up hearing.

In The Wake draws on that context without feeling retro. There’s impressive playing from everybody, more knockout solos than I can list (listen to Freeks on Lesedi), but essentially it’s a wordless ensemble album, where mood, empathy and working together shape the message and the sound. Zwide has told several interviewers how conscious he is of the responsibility – and risks – of being “leader”. He much prefers the title “facilitator” and, on this showing, that approach generates the right kind of results.

Not all the new jazz being created in Cape Town comes out of the UCT College of Music (Zwide is a CPUT graduate; not even in music) and Kujenga’s highly distinctive voice usefully reminds us of the multiple sources (historic, national and international) of the city’s sonic landscape.

From feedback online, it’s clear that Lesedi is rapidly becoming a listener favourite: a militant opening, an appealing, soulful melody and delicious solos. For me, Abaphantsi with its collective movement towards the light is irresistibly stirring, and my one regret is that Hymn for Hani isn’t part of this collection. But In the Wake isn’t really an album of discrete tracks. All its elements fit together and flow seamlessly to carry the vision of its makers. I won’t need reminders to look out for Kujenga’s third one.

Unreleased Tete Mbambisa sessions finally see the light of African Day

Last Friday April 5 was a good day for South African jazz. Not only did it see the first two releases from the new Africarise label (https://mg.co.za/friday/2024-04-06-africarise-sa-jazz-to-the-globe/), but also the first truly archival release from a more venerable one, As-Shams.

Its not the first time As-Shams has dug into its archival tape crates. But those earlier outings have re-released existing albums that, under apartheid-era, independent label conditions, never received the profile their quality merited.

But African Day (https://as-shams.bandcamp.com/album/african-day) is one you’ve never, ever heard before unless you worked at the label or the Satbel Studios back in 1976.

At the album’s core is a quartet led by pianist Dr (he received his honorary degree from UCT late last year) Tete Mbambisa, with tenorist Duku Makasi, bassist Sipho Gumede and drummer Gilbert Matthews. On the first five tracks, they’re joined by Basil Manenberg Coetzee on tenor and flute and Barney Rachabane on alto; on the subsequent four by trumpeter Dennis Mpale. (A trumpet is also clearly audible in some of the earlier horn choruses, and trading bars on Mr Mecca. But as is the way with ancient tapes, across two sessions – the second tape of which was actually un-annotated – it may not have been noted anywhere and thus hard to credit accurately.)

The album’s a kind of sonic bridge between the 1969 Soul Jazzmen quartet partnership between Mbambisa and Makasi on Inhlupeko, (https://matsulimusic.bandcamp.com/album/inhlupeko-distress ), the much larger horn line-up around Makasi on Tete’s Big Sound, (https://madaboutrecordslabel.bandcamp.com/album/tete-mbambisa-tetes-big-sound ) – also recorded in 1976 – and the Mbambisa/Coetzee partnership on the 1979 Did You Tell Your Mother? (https://eatingstanding.bandcamp.com/album/did-you-tell-your-mother)

It also reflects musical ideas that Mbambisa had been considering at least since Inhlupeko, as he told me when I interviewed him for the liner notes of that album. In particular, he’d felt old Room at The Top playing partner Mpale’s horn didn’t have the right sound for his concept of Inhlupeko, but “I had a place for that on another recording…”

All the compositions  are Mbambisa’s – including, of course, his classic, Umsenge – apart from a lush cover arrangement of Mackay Davashe’s Khumbula Jane. Consistent with As Shams’ mission at the time to showcase all facets of Black creativity, there’s an original, cover portrait of Mbambisa by Zulu Bidi, who would later play bass on Did You Tell Your Mother.

The gorgeous, 17-minute title track gives the horns tons of room to stretch out and definitely announces Rachabane, then just 30, as a formidable player. On the sprightly label tribute Koh-i-noor (label boss Rashid Vally’s father’s general store: As-Sham’s first home), there’s a rare extended flute solo from Coetzee.

Throughout, as always, we have more evidence of Gumede’s skill and intelligence as a bass player. The more of these archival recordings that emerge, the clearer it becomes that there’s an important bass book waiting to be written about him.

Part of Mbambisa’s power as a musician has always been the astuteness and insight of his arranging. His own piano solos are beautifully conceived, but unshowy and perfectly judged to let the shape and spirit of each composition emerge. These tracks are about the music, not any individual player – including the leader. Listen to his piano, though – for example, his solos on Siviwe, Mr Mecca and the closing, untitled, track – and you’ll hear a true original: a sharp modernist whose roots nevertheless couldn’t be anywhere else but here.

That said, it’s also wonderful to have more of Makasi now out on record. When people talk about historic South African saxophonists, it’s often Kippie Moeketsi’s name that (not unreasonably) pops up first. But Makasi is just simply a gorgeous player: fluent, warm, gentle and powerfully soulful. That’s all on display in these ten tracks.

Whenever a release from the 1970s emerges, it adds more to our understanding of the 1970s jazz scene here. Far from a decade that was “empty” or “silent” – as music writing focused on the achievements of South Africans based overseas tends to suggest – a rich ecosystem of original music flourished. Apartheid may have been attempting to restrict and shut off creative spaces, but by zig-zagging the country (the players on this album hail from Johannesburg, KZN, and the Eastern and Western Capes) and using the grassroots networks created by jazz-appreciating communities and individuals, music was still made. It’s wonderful that it’s now – at last! – seeing the light of the African day.

https://m.facebook.com/uct.ac.za/videos/video-well-known-south-african-composer-and-pianist-tete-mbambisa-was-recently-a/139607629172620/?locale=hi_IN