Why Jazz? South Africa 2019 Carol A. Muller Abstract: I consider the current state of jazz in South Africa in response to the formation of the nation- state in the 1990s. I argue that while there is a recurring sense of the precarity of jazz in South Africa as measured by the short lives of jazz venues, there is nevertheless a vibrant jazz culture in which musicians are using their own studios to experiment with new ways of being South African through the freedom of asso- ciation of people and styles forming a music that sounds both local and comfortable in its sense of place in the global community. This essay uses the words of several South African musicians and concludes by situating the artistic process of South African artist William Kentridge in parallel to jazz improvisation. It’s been really incredible to be an ambassador of South Africa and South African music when you go abroad. I feel like our heritage and culture has noth- ing to do with a skin tone. I really feel like it’s got to do with South Africa and being South African, really trying to hold the flag very high, singing the national anthem, singing a lot of South African jazz repertoire, it’s always very nice, and a very proud moment when you are overseas and you can say this is my culture, this is where I come from. –Vocalist Melanie Scholtz, 20101 I spent winter break 2018–2019 with Universi- ty of Pennsylvania undergraduates in Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Pretoria. We visited a series of newly built or reconceptualized museums in the three cities, entities that had been created or re- carol a. muller is Profes- imagined in the post-apartheid era to reflect on sor of Music at the University of South Africa’s colonial and apartheid past and to Pennsylvania. She is the author move its peoples toward reconciliation and nation- of Musical Echoes: South African al unity in the present and future. We visited Cape Women Thinking in Jazz (2011), Fo- cus on South African Music (2008), Town’s Slave Lodge, the District Six Museum, the and South African Music: A Centu- Bo-Kaap neighborhood; we spent time climbing ry of Traditions in Transformation Table Mountain, Lions Head, and then rested in (2004). Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens; we listened to © 2019 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences doi:10.1162/DAED_a_01747 115 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed_a_01747 by guest on 25 September 2021 Why Jazz? live music in the Mojo Hotel Food and I had attended a very lively and sold out South Africa Drink Market in Sea Point every evening; performance of South African multi-in- 2019 we watched the Goema festival musi- strumentalist Kyle Shepherd and his band cians parading through the city center. At at the Orbit in late July 2018, and like so Mzansi Restaurant in Langa township, we many others, struggled to understand heard and watched a marimba group per- how this amazing venue, a site of so much form while we ate. At the Amazink the- innovation and musical energy, had shut ater-restaurant in Kayamandi Township its doors. Sadly, what had happened to the outside of Stellenbosch, we experienced Orbit was already true for so many oth- an amazing musical theater production er live venues for South African jazz: op- that resonated with the strands of Lady- timistically opened in the post-apartheid smith Black Mambazo’s isicathamiya and moment in Cape Town and Johannes- Mbongeni Ngema’s Sarafina musical the- burg, by early 2019, they had simply dis- ater style but focused on personal stories. appeared from the city’s nightlife. That was Cape Town. Then we flew to Jo- Even with the shuttered sense of live hannesburg: visiting the Apartheid Mu- jazz venues in South Africa, like Ansell’s seum and the Wits University Museum blog post, my reflections on jazz and its of Human Origins. Then onto a township purposes in post-apartheid and contem- tour of Soweto: stopping at Regina Mun- porary South Africa remain, neverthe- di, a township restaurant, and the Hector less, largely optimistic. My optimism Peterson Museum. On our final day, we springs less from the capacity to propose traveled to Pretoria: first to the Afrikaans a sustainable financial model for jazz ven- Taal (Language) Monument and then di- ues, or a certainty that jazz as we know rectly across its path, to the newly consti- it–coming out of the United States with tuted Freedom Park. its distinctive sound and stylistic peri- Despite all of the monuments to the ods–will continue its close relationship apartheid past, the only live jazz we could with South Africa. Rather, I suggest that locate was at the Crypt restaurant of Cape in many ways, South African jazz, like Town’s famous St. George’s Cathedral, the nation itself, has come into its own the site of much anti-apartheid resis- since the 1990s, and as a result, South Af- tance led by religious leaders like Arch- ricans are often more interested in defin- bishop Desmond Tutu. To reach the mu- ing a place for themselves, rooted in the sic, we walked through exhibits of acts of knowledge of South Africa’s own music social and religious justice under apart- histories, jazz or otherwise, than looking heid. While the place was filled to capac- toward American musicians and models. ity that night, it was hard to fathom the While, ideally, everybody wants to make complete absence of South African jazz in a living from their music–and often that early January–its peak holiday period– means traveling to the global North with because South African jazz was arguably its more secure currencies–I will sug- the music that most embodied the strug- gest that what sustains the drive to make gle for human and artistic freedom under music is rooted in a kind of post-apart- apartheid. And yet, just after we landed in heid embrace of the individual and col- Cape Town, British-born South African lective freedom to use the music to ex- jazz journalist and blogger Gwen Ansell plore the full range of what it means to be announced and commented on the clos- South African in the contemporary mo- ing of Johannesburg’s famous, if relative- ment, to restore narratives previously ly short-lived, center for jazz: the Orbit.2 suppressed, to celebrate place, to sound 116 Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed_a_01747 by guest on 25 September 2021 local, and perhaps also to connect musi- mostly heard in the living performances Carol A. cally to other genres that are often deftly and recordings of old South African jazz Muller woven into the fabric of jazz improvisa- standards or performed by contemporary tion. In other words, while South African musicians paying tribute to a living or de- jazz continues to exist in a condition of ceased jazz legend. precarity, constantly threatened by loss I begin my response to the question of and even extinction, it pushes its way to “why jazz?” by briefly outlining some of new modes of experimentation, renewal, the challenges in South African jazz in- human connectedness, healing, spiritu- frastructure. This discussion draws on ality, and the celebration of newly found the stories, motivations, and experienc- human freedoms: musical, political, and es of a handful of musicians who speak unfortunately much less so, economic. to the many ways in which the relative- In this essay, I respond to the question ly small South African jazz communi- “why jazz?” by engaging interrogative- ty positions itself in South Africa, living ly with how musicians relate to South Af- as jazz composers, improvisers, and per- rica’s apartheid past, how they want to be formers in the post-apartheid era. I cover in the present, and how they think them- concerns about the long shadow of politi- selves creatively into the future. I do so cal history in jazz performance; about de- from an intergenerational perspective, re- fining the styles of South African jazz his- membering that the South African jazz tory; on the place of memory in jazz; on community includes those born before the use of jazz as a medium of individu- apartheid, those who lived under apart- al and collective healing; on gender, non- heid, and a growing number of those who racialism, moving beyond categories, have recently gained diplomas, certifi- building relationships across genres in- cates, or degrees in jazz performance as the side the frame of jazz improvisation, re- “born free” generation: that is, they never storing the past through the sounds of experienced the brutality of the apartheid jazz; on the continuing dissension in jazz; regime and so carry mixed feelings about and reclaiming a place in the writing of constant references to apartheid experi- national history. Nurturing global con- ence and history. That said, what is clear is nections through musical travel remains that in post-apartheid South Africa, with important for many musicians in terms the return of those who left the country of recording and performance opportuni- in the late 1950s and 1960s, the creation ties. In the final piece of this essay, I con- of jazz education programs at several uni- textualize the work of jazz in South Afri- versities starting in the 1980s and the pres- ca by refracting it through the discours- ence of a handful of annual jazz festivals es of a similar process of collaborative and clubs in several cities, many South Af- art and music-making directed by Johan- ricans at least know something about a nesburg-based artist/performer/director category of performance called South Af- William Kentridge.