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

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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

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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. I came to Kentridge’s rican jazz. And yet, with all the monumen- brilliant narrations of art-making when I talizing of South Africa’s brutal past– hosted two South African jazz musicians new and reconfigured museums, tour- in the Arthur Ross Gallery at the Universi- ism routes and destinations, documentary ty of Pennsylvania in October 2018: saxo- films, and new school history curricula– phonist McCoy Mrubata and pianist Paul there are very few spaces or buildings that Hamner played their version of South Af- pay tribute to South Africa’s rich and var- rican jazz surrounded by an installation of ied jazz history. That heritage/history is Kentridge’s black-and-white prints.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed_a_01747 by guest on 25 September 2021 Why Jazz? Writing about the 2015 Cape Town In- The second piece in the story of South South Africa ternational Jazz Festival, a three-day an- African jazz is what seem to be musician- 2019 nual fiesta of jazz, loosely defined, Na- initiated spaces for jazz performance, tional Public Radio contributor Giovanni composition, and recording. With the re- Russonello captured the why of South Af- duction in the cost of recording equip- rican jazz: under apartheid, the “major ment, musicians have opened their own art of resistance” was jazz, with its blend- modest recording studios. There are far ing of a variety of influences from South more privately owned recording music Asia, Africa, Cuba, and the United States; studios in Cape Town, for example, than but since 1994, with the first democratic there are live performance venues for jazz elections at the end of apartheid, South specifically. A quick Google search named African jazz has lost its “revolutionary eighteen such studios in the city. In the Jo- edge. Jazz musicians now enjoyed free hannesburg-Pretoria metropolitan area, rein, but played a less clear role in the na- seventeen studios are listed. While the tional narrative” even as musicians have studios are not just for jazz, they show the begun to play along with the digital rev- shift from commercial clubs to private olution that accompanied the political studios, and show that musicians are as- transformation of the last three decades.3 suming creative control, are freer to ex- This idea frames the first response to periment with new musical possibilities, the problem of shuttered venues, which is and are thus pushing the music in a wide found in comments about South African range of directions. opera and jazz diva Sibongile Khumalo’s A third dimension of the changing in- 2016 album Breath of Life. Blogger Majo- frastructure for South African jazz is its la Majola remarks that the recording of a ties to tourism–visitors can sign up for a live performance is a remarkable feat in four-hour “jazz tour” that will take them a context in which the modes of musical to a jazz venue and perhaps to the house production and consumption have been of a jazz musician for a meal in both Cape “transformed by technology, affecting Town and Johannesburg. There are sev- monopoly in music consumption trends, eral venues in the townships of Johan- and reconstructing the marketplace all nesburg and Cape Town that will occa- together.” The positive side is that art- sionally host jazz performances: Afri- ists are put in the driver’s seat creatively, kan Freedom Station and King Kong are and they are able to control the business art/coffee/jazz spaces in Johannesburg. side of creating their music. The negative There are restaurants/art spaces and side is that there is far less demand for community centers in the Langa, Nyanga, their work because of the diversification and Gugulethu townships in Cape Town. of the marketplace, the emergence of a Jazz in the Native Yards is a production range of alternative marketing platforms, company that provides infrastructure and, as he remarks scathingly, because and audio technology for such events. South African radio “treats local musi- But most of these spaces, like the Orbit it- cians like a loathed step child, condemn- self, will not be able to sustain themselves ing them to the destitute position of beg- for more than a few years.5 ging and bribing in order to be heard.”4 The fourth piece in South African jazz There is simply a lack of support for jazz infrastructure and capacity is the longer- in the old venues, yet there are new pos- term growth of jazz programs in univer- sibilities with new technologies and pri- sities, such as the University of KwaZulu vately owned studios. Natal, the University of Cape Town, and

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed_a_01747 by guest on 25 September 2021 the University of the Witwatersrand. It is impossible to convey the richness Carol A. These programs were largely initiated by and sheer productivity of South Afri- Muller American jazz musicians: the first was can jazz, its histories, and contemporary Darius Brubeck, son of the late Dave Bru- meanings to local and international audi- beck, who founded the Center for Jazz ences in this essay. My purpose rather is and Popular Music Studies at what was to render contours of the complexity and then the University of Natal in the early diversity of contemporary music-making 1980s. Both Mike Campbell and Michael in South Africa and by South Africans, Rossi helped establish the jazz studies to capture the vibrancy of jazz as a cre- program at the University of Cape Town. ative, improvising, borrowing, and fus- There are similar programs in most ing vehicle for South African musicians, South African universities. These mu- and to do so mostly in the musicians’ own sic programs were radical interventions words. This means that only a handful of at the time of founding because they re- contemporary artists will be heard from quired bold solutions at the tertiary level here. In the spirit of a representative de- for certifying the performance and rep- mocracy, I hope that individual words ertory knowledge of so many skilled mu- speak to broader experiences, as I can sicians who may not have had appropri- only convey snippets of larger narratives ate high school certification to enter the and conversations. The sources of musi- university, but who proved to be highly cians’ words are several: interviews con- skilled performers. Brubeck and others ducted by others, promotional materials were innovative and persuasive in find- from the musicians, Jazz at Lincoln Cen- ing ways to allow these musicians into ter educational videos, the All About university programs. Some of the ear- Jazz interviews by Seton Hawkins, and ly graduates of these programs are now my own conversations with musicians. themselves South African university I have taken the liberty of extracting out teachers of jazz. from larger narratives, cutting and past- A fifth dimension of South African jazz ing, sometimes in favor of the pithy com- infrastructure comes from organizations ment that conveys essential positions or a outside of the country that periodically specific description, and at other times al- host South African musicians and engage lowing for a fuller explanation. I have also in some kind of educational mission. One found that veteran musicians often have of these is Jazz at Lincoln Center in New more to say than the younger generation. York City. South African born but educat- I start with born-free musician Vuma ed in the United States, Seton Hawkins is Levin, who is a guitarist, composer, and the director of public programs and edu- bandleader, and who captures the chang- cation resources at Lincoln Center, and in ing priorities of jazz since the end of that capacity, he has created Jazz Acade- apartheid: my videos on South African music and I think it would be a mistake to say that any regularly contributes interviews he has of our music today is divorced from apart- conducted with South African jazz mu- heid. On the other hand, we are moving sicians to All About Jazz. I draw on the more towards asking existential questions. interview transcripts, Web pages with How do we make meaning for ourselves in South African musician and recordings this new age, in the absence of a common content, and Jazz Academy videos post- oppressor?. . . . This notion of the human ed on YouTube as resources for this dis- and its acts of cultural production as con- cussion. tingent and dynamic rather than fixed and

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed_a_01747 by guest on 25 September 2021 Why Jazz? essential made a lot of sense to me. I’m half I am not really interested in African music. I South Africa black, I’m half Jewish, and it would be dif- am more committed to universal conscious- 2019 ficult for me to point to some essential his- ness. The music that I play now reflects that. tory that I could call my own. So [Homi The band I am working with now [in 2010] Bhabha’s] mimicry and hybridity idea was is in New York, William Parker on bass, a perfect way to understand what I am, Nasheet Waits on drums, Matthew Shipp from the vantage point of things I picked on piano. I met them at the Vision Festival. up along the way, musical or otherwise...... So the music I’m dealing is improvised, When the African National Congress was totally improvised music. 100%. That developing this “New African” ideology, a is what I want to do all the time. Not to lot of the African nationalists’ ideology fil- over-rehearse the music, we never rehearse tered into the music. You hear it particular- at home traditional music. I used to say to ly in choral traditions, and also in jazz mu- people it’s strange that we have to rehearse sicians’ work. . . . But in terms of the music I for hours on end. I’ve never rehearsed for 6 write, it’s Vuma. It’s a very personal thing. a prayer meeting or funeral, for tradition- al ceremonies. I always wanted to go back Then, I discuss three jazz veterans, to that where I just do things naturally. And brought together for a panel at Stellen- now I have arrived at that. We play without bosch University in July 2010 by British rehearsals. We meet thirty minutes before scholar Jonathan Eato. The panel was re- the gig and that’s it. The music we create is corded by filmmaker Aryan Kaganof and amazing. The chemistry we have, it helps the African Noise Foundation and host- me transcend. And it’s beautiful.8 ed on Vimeo.7 Fortuitously, it captured the voice of saxophonist Zim Ngqawana, A little later he sums it up: who died so suddenly in May 2011. Zim Ngqawana performs/converses along- I would like to leave my children the legacy side veteran pianist Tete Mbambisa and of freedom, free thinkers, intelligent young drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo. For all people, no fear, no greed, not being bound three musicians, prioritizing freedom, by tradition, culture, history. I had to drop not just politically, but culturally, musi- all of that. . . . I don’t consider myself an Af- cally, and spiritually, fed the purpose of rican. I’m not interested in that. It didn’t their music-making. help me. . . . I have no identity, I am not in- terested in identity because identity is false. After hearing Zim Ngqwana’s compo- There’s another thing about improvised sition “Qula Kwedini,” based on a Xho- music, we have to come to the music as sa traditional song, Zim elaborates on his equals. Nobody’s going to count you off, search for freedom in life and music by nobody’s going to tell you where you have explaining: to start. . . . It’s not a performance that I do, I did that (Qula Kwedini) music because I it’s like being at home in the community. felt I was born into a culture, a group of peo- We are meeting, celebrating. It’s not far out ple from the Eastern Cape, the Xhosa people, as a performance, I actually like to look at it 9 a society. I had to pay my dues, I had to ac- as a meditation. knowledge I was coming from somewhere. But that’s not all my interest anymore. I’ve Improvising musician Nduduzo Mak- done that. I’m not that committed to a cul- hathini, who was born in 1982 and who ture, tradition. People ask these questions has lived much of his life beyond the of me, if I am committed to African music. reaches of apartheid, reflects on the

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed_a_01747 by guest on 25 September 2021 push to freedom from tradition, culture, music? Your music, like now South Afri- Carol A. and language in Ngqawana’s music. He ca is free and we are dealing with the world Muller pairs Ngqawana with the late great pia- . . . so the thing is we are about 45 million nist Bheki Mseleku, who followed a sim- people, so we can’t do mbaqanga all of us. ilar path to rid himself of the shackles of It’s good, but some of the music we did ac- identity. Makhathini commented to Se- tually broke down the Berlin Wall. . . . The ton Hawkins in 2018: improvised music helped to bring down What’s interesting to me is that for both the wall. If you played mbaqanga music, Bra Zim and Mseleku, is that towards the it’s ok, they knew about it. But then came ends of their lives, they were both moving this music, and it really pulled some punch- towards trying to extract themselves from es. As I say, it’s the first music that got into the Zulu nation in Mseleku’s case, and the me, that makes sense to me. The free form: Xhosa nation in Bra Zim’s case. They were both hands free, feet free. trying to disown the idea of being a Xho- We’re trying, but we’ve been damaged. How sa or a Zulu music; they felt the tags were long will this go on? Coming back to South limiting and restricting them from uni- Africa and seeing this legacy, it’s hurting, versality. I find them to be really interest- really. And I don’t know what to do. I’ve ing people. . . . It has to do with trying to been fighting all my life, to get this free mu- deconstruct these aspects I was describ- sic thing into the market. I’ve been fight- ing earlier. Things like him being a Xhosa ing: I am one of the pioneers in this music.11 person and thinking around the memories of his upbringing. He wanted, maybe not Again, pianist, composer, and produc­ to disconnect, but to go beyond that, and er and the almost-born-free Nduduzo it comes through in his improvisation. I Makhathini reflects on the decades of don’t know if you’ve heard the live record- Moholo-Moholo’s fight for freedom in ing from Linder Auditorium [50th Birth- his music. day Celebration (2010)], which is complete- Jazz was always a music that could reflect ly abstract, but you can feel connection to people’s pain, but in the Blues Notes’ mu- the hymnals he drew from Abdullah Ibra- sic, and Louis Moholo-Moholo’s in par- him’s music. You can feel connections to ticular, you find a confronting of what was traditional music, but there is a constant going on in South Africa. There’s an al- movement away from that, too. He was bum of Louis Moholo-Moholo’s called Bra into teachings about dissolving, this Zen Louis–Bra Tebs that has a song called “Son- state of No Mind. It plays in an interesting ke.” On it, Bra Louis talks about how the way in his music, especially when he was music took them through pain, but also playing with people like Matthew Shipp at how it became a way of living and laugh- the Vision Festival. It was about creating ing together. It’s such a powerful song, and an alternative space for people to freely ex- also it sonically represents what it’s talking press themselves, whether through music, about. It’s got an ostinato in the bass, that dance, painting.10 to me represents the resistance, and then over that they develop these melodies over it and it goes abstract. But the ostinato re- Free-jazz musician, drummer Louis Mo- mains. To me, it’s a representation of what holo-Moholo follows on from Ngqawana: we’ve all been through, and Bra Louis cap- I’m happy, I’m happy that you say this be- tured the experience of exile in the 1960s in cause I started playing this avant-garde and a profound way. He was trying to connect I was blamed. Why don’t you play your own with a construct of home.12

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed_a_01747 by guest on 25 September 2021 Why Jazz? How can you make a museum in often brutal colonial encounters be- South Africa about a language?13 tween those of European colonial dis- 2019 Language is a borrowing from verskillend position, and those who were exiled and (different) languages.14 imported from East Asia, Mozambique, Angola, and elsewhere as slaves. Quite literally carved in stone, the Taal Monu- Jazz musician and film music compos- ment tells only one side of the story of Af- er Kyle Shepherd skeptically asks how rikaans history. But it stands, intention- one monumentalizes a living language, ally facing the more recently constructed in response to us telling him that the Freedom Park, which in contrast monu- Penn undergraduate class will visit the mentalizes the lives of those who fought Afrikaans Taal (Language) Monument the struggle for freedom from Afrikan- in Pretoria as part of our engagement er oppression. The Taal Monument re- with post-apartheid South Africa. Shep- mains a monumental reminder of the herd’s question is wrapped in tones of brutality of apartheid era exclusions and emotional pain and anger, as he reflects oppression. And it bears witness to the back on his work with Afrikaaps, the futility of building a museum to the lan- Cape Town hip hop/spoken word collab- guage of a people. Perhaps like jazz and oration from the early 2000s that sought freedom itself, language should exist as to restore place and ownership of the a living entity, owned by no one group, language of Afrikaans to Cape Town’s freely shared, absorbed, borrowed, and brown people.15 It was their ancestors localized. who had originally forged the language I am tracking in my own musical way, of Afrikaans out of encounters with co- chronologically, the story of Cape Town.16 lonial Europeans. A language now wide- ly recognized as originally written in Ar- At about the same time as the Afri- abic script in the context of slavery, exile, kaaps project, Shepherd released a less and European colonialism, it was appro- controversial and more clearly jazz- priated and repurposed as a whites-only inflected recording, a musical render- language by the Afrikaner Nationalists ing of the restoration of a much-neglect- in the twentieth century, as born out by ed piece of South African and human the stories told and visually represented genetic history: the story of South Af- inside the Afrikaans Taal Monument in rican’s KhoiSan, the first peoples, and Pretoria. indeed, the peoples with the most di- Kyle Shepherd, Jitsvinger, and other verse and oldest repository of mito- Afrikaaps storytellers created a touring chondrial dna. These are the people, musical theater production to set the his- denigrated and discarded by the apart- torical record straight, informed by aca- heid regime, who are now believed to be demic research on the intertwined and the closest representatives of our human complicated history of the Afrikaans lan- origins. And they are blended into the guage. Shepherd recalled with bitterness mixed heritage of so many people of the how the show was verbally slaughtered Western Cape. On Shepherd’s South Afri- by the old Afrikaner journalists for the can History !X recording, the Khoisan are musicians’ and poets’ insistent resto- represented by the clicking sounds of ration of the historical narrative of Afri- Khoisan language and performance on kaans as one focused on the messy diver- the xaru, or musical mouth bow of the sity and rich history of a language forged Khoisan peoples.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed_a_01747 by guest on 25 September 2021 We are ok in our skins with being South African gourd that you find in the instrument that Carol A. and African musicians within the global space.17 makes that incredibly loud noise. Muller All of us, except perhaps one, all of us are bandleaders in our separate spaces and we Sibongile Khumalo was born into apart- have come together to collaborate, to cre- heid, but also into a musically rich home ate something that might be definitive of a guided by her father who was both clas- jazz sound that is not Xhosa or Zulu or Af- sically trained and had a deep knowledge rikaans or Indian, that might actually come of and connection to Zulu music histo- to be identified as “South African jazz.” Be- ry and heritage. In the spring of 2016, a cause everybody interprets, has interpret- group of South African jazz musicians ed, jazz in the way that they know how, called Uhadi, which again, references the from wherever they come from in the con- old hunting and musical bow of many text of South African music as a whole con- Southern African hunter gatherer com- text. Somebody like [Hugh] Masekela is munities, was invited to perform at Lin- distinct in what he does, but there are oth- coln Center. I talked with Sibongile about er elements of music that comes out of a the use of the bow and its meaning for group, a collaboration such as Uhadi. musicians in contemporary South Af- rican jazz and in the specific makeup of What you find in Xhosa music you might her New York City ensemble. Sibongile not find in Zulu music or Sotho music, so explained: picking up on an ihubo, a Zulu sound of ukuhuba, which is the chant that a Zulu Uhadi is the name chosen because it refer- singing musician would make, this would ences the root of our music, where we be- be different for instance to a Xhosa sound, lieve we come from as musicians, recog- a Xhosa word–[she illustrates both kinds] nizing, acknowledging, embracing our tra- and over and above that within the Xhosa ditional roots, our indigenous footprints, space of music making, you find the Xhosa being comfortable with the past and pres- women split singing. I can’t do that. ent in how we shape the future of South Af- rican jazz. [South African jazz is] distinct Invariably the band adjusts to what they from other kinds of jazz. These elements of hear, because they are familiar with the our root music, of our folk music give us a sound that music makers make at home. A distinct sound, they provide a distinct fea- lot of this music we hear subliminally, a lot ture in the music, and basically we are com- of this music is there, so you incorporate fortable with that, we are ok in our skins these elements into this music because you with being South African and African mu- have a well to reference from. And it just sicians within the global space. sort of filters through. So the string which you find in uhadi, re- Yes, the music has been created, the melo- fers to the taughtness, brought about by dies are in place, the harmonies are in place, the tension which you find in a group [as the words are in place, but certain things, I diverse] as this, but also the flexibility of guess like any learned art form or style you the string, if you loosen it a bit and allow it have a vocabulary that you draw from. And to take its own shape, it creates a space for it sort of manifests itself and forces its way the group to improvise, to make music as a through. group. It allows for the group, the name it- And in the jazz space because improvisa- self suggests the need for flexibility, which tion is such an essential element of it, be- resonates at the same time, off that small ing able to refer to the different languages

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed_a_01747 by guest on 25 September 2021 Why Jazz? from back home is a big boon, it helps. It attended as a child. As a young man I be- South Africa helps a lot. came involved in isicathamiya and other 2019 cm: So language becomes a kind of musi- various acapella music. But the biggest in- cal palette for you in a way. fluence for me initially was the Zionist Church, and their use of the drum, med- 18 sk: Yes it does, yes it does. itative chants, and prophecy. The Zion- ist Church incorporated Christianity and We know that South Africa’s “First Lady ancestral beliefs. . . . So I was introduced to of Song” Sibongile Khumalo’s engage- music as a mode for spirituality. . . . Later ment with all kinds of music comes out of on, I became attracted to the idea of how her childhood home, and specifically her improvised music could be a way of pro- relationship with her father, the late Khabi moting healthy communities.20 Mngoma, the well-known music educator, conductor, and choral director. In the early 2000s, Khumalo performed the role of the I really see my path in South African jazz as a Zulu musical bow player and clan histori- hybrid, a hybrid of a product of South African an Princess Magogo in Mzilikazi Khum- jazz as well as being influenced by American alo’s opera Princess Magogo. Magogo had traditional jazz, so hoping to join the Miriam been a key player in Khumalo’s childhood, Makebas with the Ella Fitzgeralds. You can real- as she recalls visiting her homestead and ly express yourself with jazz, you are not limited hearing her sing Zulu history accompa- with pitch or melody or rhythm. It’s like jumping nied on the musical bow. In the last several on a train and you have no idea where it’s going years, Khumalo has incorporated musical to go to. Sometimes it’s going to take you to the recollections of those rural visits into the same place, but most of the time it’s going to take sound of her live performances, and oth- you to an unimaginably beautiful place that you ers have also rendered similar sorts of trac- never thought you would land up at.21 es into jazz performances. This, of course, is not new to South African jazz, particu- Longing to work with a poet rather than larly, as Makhathini commented above, in her own lyrics, Melanie Scholtz engaged the musical renderings of those who went with anti-apartheid poet James Mat- into political exile: Abdullah Ibrahim was thew’s writings, in a two-year composi- quintessentially a narrator of musical tional and performance project, Freedom’s memory, and there are echoes of a South Child. Here we capture the power of the African traditional past in the free impro- words of the poet in quotes with the re- visations of all the musicians of the Blues flections of the singer: 19 Notes who followed Ibrahim into exile. “Freedom Child you have been denied too long, fill your lungs and cry rage.” Born in 1982 in KwaZulu Natal, a de- cade before the end of apartheid, Makha- It’s another gravity that hits you in the heart. thini released eight distinctive solo re- “I am black. My blackness fills me to the cordings in four years. Also a producer of brim, like a beaker of well seasoned wine. . . . other South African musical projects, he White men say black is the color of despair.” sums up what shapes and motivates his music-making: We must listen, go back and listen and to look at the poems in more depth and say, I am privileged, Growing up [in KwaZulu Natal], I heard a I am here as a result of other people’s sacrifice. lot [of] traditional Zulu music. It was based on some of the ceremonies and rituals I “Pain and blood brings our liberty.”

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed_a_01747 by guest on 25 September 2021 We live in a world where everything is so easy, so of black-and-white Kentridge prints. Carol A. convenient . . . we are not really feeding ourselves Their music-making together was fold- Muller good things, we’re not writing enough, we watch ed into a thirty-year friendship and mu- too much television, we don’t really know what sical partnership that had started be- is going on around us. So when you read poetry fore the end of apartheid, and in the odd like James’s work it’s like another gravity in your logic of apartheid racial categories, in- heart.22 volved them pursuing a partnership across the categories of “coloured” and After releasing Freedom’s Child, Scholtz “black” South Africa. When we talked joined with hip-hop artist Jitsvinger, musi- with the musicians about the overlaps cian Benjamin Jephta, and pianist Bokani or conversations that might be rendered Dyer to create something new, more mod- by locating their jazz performance in the ern, and to claim a place for the next gen- context of Kentridge’s art, we came up eration of born-free South African mu- with very little. What connections could sicians in Our Time. The recording pos- there be between three men who had sesses an intentional message about the grown up in very different circumstances privilege of being born free, about a new largely based on apartheid racial catego- generation of South African artists, who ries: black, white, and coloured? While are claiming the baton for new sounds all three currently live in the same city, Jo- and possibilities coming out of South Af- hannesburg, and are about the same age, rica. As such, Scholtz creates a musical beyond a basic notion of the transforma- space for her generation, after reflecting tive capacity of Kentridge’s prints and back through a music and poetry collab- the work of transformation inherent in oration on the gravity of what it meant jazz improvisation, the question of some to be an artist of color under apartheid in point of connection reached a dead end. contrast to the sense of freedom she now That was the case then. celebrates in a democratic dispensation, In drawing together the ideas about jazz at liberty to harness self-expression, love, as a form of artistic endeavor in contem- joy, creativity, and passion without bear- porary South Africa and listening to con- ing the burden of an unjust political sys- versations Kentridge has had with cura- tem. And it is Melanie Scholtz, this young tors and others about his artistic process, I woman jazz musician, who has the last suggest that Kentridge’s process is not that word about the varied motivations and far from the work of contemporary South purposes of South African jazz. African jazz. Here are just a few examples: Kentridge, like all jazz artists, works col- In October 2018, we hosted the perfor- laboratively, picking out artists, includ- mance of South African jazz musicians ing singers, dancers, visual artists, theater pianist Paul Hamner and saxophonist people, and composers, and they begin less and flute player McCoy Mrubata at the with a clear sense of a precomposed piece Arthur Ross Gallery on campus at the or path to production than with a strong University of Pennsylvania. This was a sense of the possibilities that come with joint project between Arthur Ross and the collaborative experimentation, risk-tak- South African jazz musicians because, at ing, and questions. Each member of the the time, the Ross Gallery had an installa- team brings to the studio the hope not that tion of South African artist William Ken- they have answers, but rather that they un- tridge. Hamner and Mrubata played their derstand first what the questions even are. music amidst the visual treasure trove They work with uncertainty, seeking out

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed_a_01747 by guest on 25 September 2021 Why Jazz? the gaps, for the gaps might lead to imag- the provisional, the spontaneous, even South Africa inative leaps. Allowing for the absurd, the unexpected. And he wants everyone 2019 comments Kentridge, liberates one from to play: “play creates the conditions that the traps of linear thinking, permitting help the other part to happen,” he sug- the release of complexity, of collage over gests. “I am more moved when uncertain- straight narrative. There is an openness to ty remains,” he says elsewhere.24 dislocation, fragmentation, dismember- Frankly, I can think of no better descrip- ing, remembering, and remaking, to allow tion of the values and processes of South for new and novel ways of making art, the- African jazz. Stretching the string, borrow- ater, and music. ing, juxtaposing, rendering, disappearing, Kentridge starts at the place of the “less reappearing, liberating, restoring, remem- good idea,” he relishes the possibilities bering. So far from the American centers and virtues of bastardy, there is no need for of jazz composition, performance, and authenticity, for purity, for any real feeling canonization, South African jazz embrac- of a center.23 Erasure is his method of con- es the freedom to expand creatively on all struction; he urges the viewer/listener/ kinds of possibilities, and to experiment reader and cocreators to be fully engaged with a multitude of partnerships, languag- in the making of the work/performance/ es, instruments, and sounds, relishing the installation. At the very core of his pro- power of peripheral thinking and all the cess, one might argue that Kentridge rel- “virtues of bastardy.” ishes the contingent, the improvisational,

endnotes 1 Melanie Scholtz, “Melanie Scholtz,” YouTube, uploaded November 8, 2009, https://www .youtube.com/watch?v=sZZrHzZHIcA. 2 See “rip the Orbit: Time to Build New Jazz Spaces,” sisgwenjazz, January 4, 2019, https:// sisgwenjazz.wordpress.com/2019/01/04/rip-the-orbit-time-to-build-new-jazz-spaces/ ?fbclid=IwAR3OKdJflPInpqmXo-aOeECue8XxylJNOh1VC_3jkHhvncR-FpU11KphHJY. 3 Giovanni Russonello, “Three Jazz Pianists, A Generation After Apartheid,” A Blog Supreme, npr Jazz, March 28, 2015, https://www.npr.org/sections/ablogsupreme/2015/03/28/ 395541160/three-jazz-pianists-a-generation-after-apartheid. 4 Majola Majola, “Sibongile Khumalo: An Eternal Breath of Life,” noted.man, March 16, 2016, http://www.notedman.com/khumalo-breathes-life/. 5 For Johannesburg, see, for example, “Afrikan Freedom Station,” Gauteng: It Starts Here, https://www.gauteng.net/attractions/attraction-afrikan-freedom-station; and “Johannes- burg Jazz Safari,” Coffee Beans Routes: Pan African Creative Travel, https://coffeebeans routes.com/johannesburg-jazz-safari/. For Cape Town, see “Where to Watch Live Jazz in Cape Town,” CapeTownMagazine.com, https://www.capetownmagazine.com/jazz; “Township Dinner and Jazz Experience,” MyCapeTownStay.com, https://www.mycape townstay.com/Township_Dinner_and_Jazz_Experience; and “7 Top Jazz Venues in Cape Town,” Travel by xo, April 2, 2013, http://blog.xoafrica.com/destinations/7-top-jazz -venue-cape-town/. Please note, however, that the website presence does not necessarily mean that these events and spaces are still in existence; a website is not always taken down when a business shuts down. 6 Seton Hawkins, “Vuma Levin: Musical Painting,” All About Jazz, May 8, 2018, https://www .allaboutjazz.com/vuma-levin-musical-painting-vuma-levin-by-seton-hawkins.php?page=1. 7 See African Noise Foundation, “The Legacy,” Vimeo, October 14, 2014, on https://vimeo .com/108933925.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/daed_a_01747 by guest on 25 September 2021 8 See “vision Festival xv,” Arts for Art, https://www.artsforart.org/vf14.html. Prioritizing Carol A. spontaneity, jazz singer Sathima Bea Benjamin would cite the aesthetic preferences of Duke Muller Ellington as she experienced him in a recording studio in Paris in 1963: he used only one take. This resonates with the preference for fewer rehearsals articulated here by Ngqawana. 9 African Noise Foundation, “The Legacy.” 10 Seton Hawkins, “Nduduzo Makhathini: Jazz is a Shared Memory,” All About Jazz, Febru- ary 1, 2018, https://www.allaboutjazz.com/nduduzo-makhathini-jazz-is-a-shared-memory -nduduzo-makhathini-by-seton-hawkins.php. 11 African Noise Foundation, “The Legacy.” 12 Louis Moholo-Moholo, Bra Louis–Bra Tebs, Ogun, 2005, https://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=dGwMcf6wMJg. 13 Author conversation with Penn students, Kyle Shepherd’s Atlantic Films studio, Cape Town, January 2019. 14 Jitsvinger in Dylan Valley, “What is Afrikaaps?” YouTube, uploaded March 3, 2013, https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVpBHcR1_tU. 15 Ibid. 16 See the promotional video for the 2012 release of South African History !X at Gallo Records, “Kyle Shepherd–South African History !X (Officialepk ),” uploaded March 15, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXSHivweib0. 17 I interviewed Sibongile Khumalo for Jazz at Lincoln Center’s South African Jazz tour. For vid- eos of the interview, see Jazz at Lincoln Center’s jazz academy, “South Africa’s ‘First Lady of Song’ Sibongile Khumalo, Part One–Four,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynLrb N2pg2o; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KE4uzokXZw; https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=a-aCgNJRH_0; and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZcgrqC1MPg. See also Jazz Day South Africa, “Sibongile Khumalo,” YouTube, uploaded September 7, 2017, https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=NirSyiIhc7Y. 18 Ibid. 19 See Christine Lucia, “Abdullah Ibrahim and the Uses of Memory,” British Journal of Ethnomu- sicology 11 (2) (2002): 125–143; and Carol Ann Muller, “Musical Remembrance, Exile, and the Remaking of South African Jazz (1960–1979),” in The Oxford Handbook of Music Revival, ed. Caroline Bithell and Juniper Hill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 20 Hawkins, “Nduduzo Makhathini.” 21 Scholtz, “Melanie Scholtz,” interview as the 2010 Standard Bank Young Artist Award winner for Jazz. Some of the other women are keyboardist/singer Thandi Ntuli, saxophonist Lin- da Sikhakhane, and trombonist/singer Siya Makuzeni, all of whom are tightly connected to each other and to the broader history of South African jazz. See Thandi Ntuli, Exiled, Band- camp, February 1, 2018, https://thandintuli.bandcamp.com/; Linda Sikhakhane, Two Sides, One Mirror, Bandcamp, January 16, 2018, https://lindasikhakhane.bandcamp.com/; and Siya Makuzeni, Out of this World, Bandcamp, September 12, 2016, https://siyamakuzenisextet .bandcamp.com/album/out-of-this-world. 22 The words and juxtapositions are drawn from an interview with Melanie Scholtz. See Slow- design Cape Town, “Freedom’s Child–Melanie Scholtz Sings J. Matthews,” YouTube, up- loaded April 4, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQQ43kBZdSk. 23 There are many video recordings of Kentridge speaking of his process and rendering perfor- mances on YouTube. The most recent comes from his Brooklyn production “The Head & the Load.” See Park Avenue Armory, “Artist Talk: The Head & the Load,” YouTube, December 6, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJtUH5HSrWI. 24 William Kentridge and Rosalind C. Morris, That Which Is Not Drawn (New York: Seagull Books, 2014).

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