tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/blue-notes-43042/articlesBlue Notes – The Conversation2022-05-12T14:06:45Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1827022022-05-12T14:06:45Z2022-05-12T14:06:45ZJazz: South Africa’s Shane Cooper and his band Mabuta make borders irrelevant<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462251/original/file-20220510-20-k7vw2d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Shane Cooper (striped shirt) with his Mabuta band members. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Aidan Tobias courtesy Shane Cooper</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South African jazz seems to be having another international moment. Recently, for example, the Blue Note jazz label launched a new imprint, <a href="https://www.bluenote.com/announcing-blue-note-africa/">Blue Note Africa</a> dedicated to the continent’s music. Its first release – and his second for the label – will be South African pianist <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/nduduzo-makhathini-mn0003068518/biography">Nduduzo Makhathini</a>’s <a href="https://www.bluenote.com/nduduzo-makhathini-returns-with-in-the-spirit-of-ntu/">In the Spirit of Ntu</a>. In the same month, <a href="https://2022.jazz.org">Jazz at Lincoln Centre</a> hosted a South African season. </p>
<p>Even the UK’s annual BBC Proms this year will dedicate a night to <a href="https://www.royalalberthall.com/tickets/proms/bbc-proms-2022/prom-56-the-south-african-jazz-songbook/">The South African Songbook</a>, with trumpeter <a href="http://www.theorbit.co.za/marcus-wyatt/">Marcus Wyatt</a> conducting the international <a href="https://www.mo.nl/en/the-orchestra">Metropole Orkest</a> and the voices of South African vocalist <a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/node/6283">Siyabonga Mthembu</a> and Zimbabwe-born UK singer/songwriter <a href="https://nataal.com/eska">ESKA</a>.</p>
<p>Of course, such exposure is not unprecedented. South African painter <a href="https://www.gerardsekotofoundation.com/artist-overview.htm">Gerard Sekoto</a> was playing jazz in Paris bars in the late 1940s. The international careers of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-legacy-of-iconic-singer-miriam-makeba-and-her-art-of-activism-178230">Miriam Makeba</a>, <a href="https://abdullahibrahim.co.za/biography/">Abdullah Ibrahim</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-hugh-masekela-the-horn-player-with-a-shrewd-ear-for-music-of-the-day-86414">Hugh Masekela</a> are only the best known of a raft of musicians who sought exile from <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a>. The South African band <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-the-blue-notes-south-africas-first-generation-of-free-jazz-83824">Blue Notes</a> were massively influential on European jazz scenes from the 1960s onwards.</p>
<p>There are risks in being “fashionable” – not least that straitjackets of international audience perception may be created about what “South African jazz” is. Many of today’s international showcases have a nostalgic focus on the greats of the past such as Makeba and Masekela. However, multiple legacies inform the sound of South African jazz and contribute to the rich lexicon from which it can draw. But none of them defines it.</p>
<p>Today, South African jazz speaks in multiple, diverse voices. Its internationalism, thankfully, is no longer driven by hideous repression at home and, in the digital age, doesn’t always even require physical journeys. One example (and there are many) is the new album <a href="https://mabuta.bandcamp.com/album/finish-the-sun">Finish the Sun</a> from the group <a href="http://www.shanecoopermusic.com/mabuta/">Mabuta</a>, led by bassist <a href="http://www.shanecoopermusic.com">Shane Cooper</a>. </p>
<p>Finish the Sun is only the latest demonstration of how South African jazz simultaneously looks inwards and outwards and communicates with listeners and fellow-players everywhere. </p>
<h2>Finish the Sun</h2>
<p>Mabuta takes its name for the Japanese word for “eyelid”, opening a door between the conscious and the unconscious. Liminality – crossing borders and the interrogation of boundaries – was on Mabuta’s agenda from its first release <a href="https://mabuta.bandcamp.com/album/welcome-to-this-world">Welcome to this World</a> (2018). Cooper himself is a bassist who also skips the border into electronic club music; the 2018 personnel was all-South African, with the addition of UK saxophonist <a href="http://www.shabakahutchings.com/biography/">Shabaka Hutchings</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462253/original/file-20220510-16-e7gxme.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An album cover showing an illustration of a person floating on their back in a pool surrounded by rocks under a round sun." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462253/original/file-20220510-16-e7gxme.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462253/original/file-20220510-16-e7gxme.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462253/original/file-20220510-16-e7gxme.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462253/original/file-20220510-16-e7gxme.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462253/original/file-20220510-16-e7gxme.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462253/original/file-20220510-16-e7gxme.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462253/original/file-20220510-16-e7gxme.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Artwork courtesy Shane Cooper.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On this 2022 outing, South Africans Cooper (on guitars and synths as well as bass), keyboard player <a href="https://blackmajor.co.za/artist/bokani-dyer/">Bokani Dyer</a>, trumpeter <a href="https://weekendspecial.co.za/robin-fassie-kock-quintet-rfk5/">Robin Fassie</a> and reedmen <a href="http://www.theorbit.co.za/buddy-wells/">Buddy Wells</a> and <a href="https://www.newframe.com/home-is-where-the-music-is-for-sisonke-xonti/">Sisonke Xonti</a> work with guest drummers from Switzerland (<a href="https://www.juliansartorius.com">Julian Sartorius</a>, <a href="https://www.arthurhnatek.com">Arthur Hnatek</a> and Mario Hänni); Sweden (Christopher Castillo); the Netherlands (<a href="https://www.instagram.com/jamespete/?hl=en">Jamie Peet</a>); <a href="https://www.instagram.com/lmaduna/?hl=en">Lungile Maduna</a> (South Africa); and <a href="https://splice.com/sounds/splice-sessions/ss_congolese_drums_andre_toungamani">Andre Toungamani</a> (Senegal), some recorded at a distance.</p>
<p>Like its predecessor, Finish the Sun is “<a href="https://sisgwenjazz.wordpress.com/2018/02/06/shane-coopers-mabuta-and-the-obscenity-of-walls/">a bassist’s album but not a bass album</a>”. Cooper created all the compositions but the instrumental solos come from everybody – although the track Spirit Animal is quintessential Cooper. It is never clear whether he is the bass’s spirit animal or it is his. His concept sounds as much through his guitar and through his use of effects and washes. These shape the mood of the eight tracks, sometimes creating a feel that irresistibly invokes a time or place.</p>
<p>The album employs markers of national identity in surprising and often subtle ways so it speaks fluently across all musical borders. Nevertheless, it does draw deep from our lexicon.</p>
<p>The first two numbers, the title track and Where the Heart Is, are where South Africa speaks most explicitly. The title words can’t help recalling the classic song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-YSx21p9S4">Lakutshon’ Ilanga</a> (When the sun sets, I’ll remember you). Here, the album notes say, it alludes to “the energy (that) was felt by all the musicians in a way that sounds as though we were in the same room after finishing some sun together”. It’s a fast, cyclical, galloping Eastern Cape sound, but layering modernity and tradition in its juxtapositions of electronic and instrumental voices. Where the Heart Is maintains the pace, with a classic South African bass line, call and response and chorusing behind the solos; it can’t wait to get home.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cv-aeVhtfyM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The video off the first album.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By contrast, Umshana carries a vibe of South Africa’s Afro-Soul era, with Xonti’s solo chanelling the spirit of saxophonist <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/basil-coetzee">Basil Manenberg Coetzee</a>, while Kucheza has Dyer’s organ reminding us of Black Moses and the <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-soul-brothers-mn0000044338/biography">Soul Brothers</a>, and Cooper’s bass recalling bassist <a href="https://www.bakithikumalobass.com">Bakithi Khumalo</a>. None of these are obvious copycat quotes. Rather, the musicians are using a pinch of this and a dash of that to magick up some time-travel to where South Africans will recognise the scenery. </p>
<p>But if you’re in a club in Basel, you can just relish Umshana’s gorgeous rhythmic complexity or Kucheza’s chiming, joyful guitar and keys: you don’t have to have been where we’ve been. Nor do you need to know Johannesburg to recognise the moody urban vibe of Joburg Poem; Cantillo’s Swedish drums perfectly catch its feel.</p>
<p>Rather than retreating behind idiomatic musical borders, or spending energy explicitly fighting them, Mabuta simply make them irrelevant.</p>
<p>In many ways, that is the essential legacy of South African jazz on its international journeys from the 1940s onwards. And that, rather than any externally-curated definition, from however prestigious a platform, is what continues to keep the music vibrantly breathing and growing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182702/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The album Follow the Sun shows how South African jazz draws from diversity to speak fluidly across borders.Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1251632019-10-14T12:03:59Z2019-10-14T12:03:59ZWhat lost photos of Blue Notes say about South Africa’s jazz history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296670/original/file-20191011-96226-1ehb39z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mongezi Feza on trumpet at the concert in 1964 that is the source of the rare new photos of The Blue Notes</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Norman Owen-Smith</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1964 a young South African student and photography enthusiast, Norman Owen-Smith, took his Leica camera along to a jazz concert at the then University of Natal Pietermaritzburg’s Great Hall and captured a series of black and white images of the band, the Blue Notes.</p>
<p>Through the intervention of jazz scholars, these photos have been printed, restored and exhibited, years after the band became iconic.</p>
<p>The story of the Blue Notes is inextricable from apartheid’s exiling of the musical – specifically jazz – imagination. Owen-Smith’s photos are a rare and unexpected contribution to a hungry archive for jazz lovers all over the world.</p>
<p>The Blue Notes embody the beauty of South African jazz in the 1960s, and the dynamics of its struggles during and against apartheid. The ensemble began in 1959 after a meeting between two of South Africa’s most revered jazz artists, both of whom died in exile. One was pianist and alto saxophonist Mtutuzeli ‘Dudu’ Pukwana, the other pianist Chris McGregor. By 1964 the other four members were cemented: Louis Moholo-Moholo on drums – the only surviving member – and Nikele ‘Nick’ Moyake on tenor saxophone, Mongezi Feza on trumpet and Johnny Mbizo Dyani on double bass.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296672/original/file-20191011-96252-1a1l18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296672/original/file-20191011-96252-1a1l18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296672/original/file-20191011-96252-1a1l18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296672/original/file-20191011-96252-1a1l18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296672/original/file-20191011-96252-1a1l18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296672/original/file-20191011-96252-1a1l18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296672/original/file-20191011-96252-1a1l18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Blue Notes in full swing in Pietermaritzburg on the eve of them leaving the country.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Norman Owen-Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Owen-Smith’s joyful, simple photographs allow the ordinary to be extraordinary, showing musical fraternity, passionate performance and a racially mixed band at the height of apartheid, after the clampdown that followed the Sharpeville massacre of 1960. They capture a moment in the band’s history when they were still young – in their teens and twenties – and just before they went into exile.</p>
<p>They are a notable addition to a very thin archive. It includes an excerpt from a documentary on jazz in Britain that shows a snippet of the Blue Notes’ performance at the 1964 Antibes Jazz Festival, posted on YouTube by McGregor’s younger brother. The archival footage is owned by French TV, but even scholars of South African jazz based in France have not been able to find it. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aTXq6OH7XbU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The rare video excerpt of the band on YouTube.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is the only video excerpt of the Blue Notes I have come across – even though, as I noted in my <a href="https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.697434">doctoral dissertation</a>, they are one of the more thoroughly covered jazz ensembles of the apartheid era. </p>
<p>Other elements of the archive consist of an online data base about the band built by British journalist Mike Fowler. Its source text remains Maxine McGregor’s biography Chris McGregor and the Brotherhood of Breath: My Life with a South African Jazz Pioneer. </p>
<p>Another component is an album called Township Bop that was released in 2002. The compilation was made up of previously unheard material which the band had recorded at the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s Transcription Centre in 1964. </p>
<p>And in 2013, radio station SAfm presented a two-part documentary. In addition, a number of artists have performed and even recorded tributes to the band. </p>
<p>All these contributions – now including Owen-Smith’s photos – mark a change of fortune for a group of musicians who played mostly on the live scene. Their recordings tended to go missing for long stretches, as with their 1964 live recording in Durban, Legacy: Live in South Afrika 1964, which was released in 1995. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296678/original/file-20191011-96226-10kc2cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296678/original/file-20191011-96226-10kc2cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296678/original/file-20191011-96226-10kc2cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296678/original/file-20191011-96226-10kc2cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296678/original/file-20191011-96226-10kc2cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296678/original/file-20191011-96226-10kc2cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296678/original/file-20191011-96226-10kc2cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Co-founder of the Blue Notes, pianist Chris McGregor.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Norman Owen-Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Memory and healing</h2>
<p>From the late 1950s, many jazz musicians left the country; others were subjected to the alienating practices of the apartheid music industry, which often would book or record them only if they complied with their demands – what to play, who to play with and how to play it; many stopped playing altogether. These are the provocations of hurt that recur, as if on a loop, each time we engage with South African jazz history. Indeed, some of these commercial imperatives remain – not just in South Africa and not just related to jazz. Musicians’ lives remain precarious. </p>
<p>Healing, then, surely entails bringing these musicians back. </p>
<p>But how, and to where? Louis Moholo-Moholo is back home in Langa, in Cape Town, and is still playing. But what of Moyake, who died in South Africa? And Dyani, who is buried in South Africa? And Feza, who left the country at the age of 19? McGregor visited the country shortly before his death, but not Pukwana. Healing the open wound caused by exile’s rupture requires physical and creative return.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296682/original/file-20191011-96262-1kcf4po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296682/original/file-20191011-96262-1kcf4po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296682/original/file-20191011-96262-1kcf4po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296682/original/file-20191011-96262-1kcf4po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296682/original/file-20191011-96262-1kcf4po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296682/original/file-20191011-96262-1kcf4po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296682/original/file-20191011-96262-1kcf4po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Legendary drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo is the sole surviving member of the band.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Norman Owen-Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tribute performances, recordings and documentaries are one way, if they do not pander to nostalgia. Teaching and research suggest another way, but only if neither succumb to a process of canonisation that sanitises the complex story of the Blue Notes. After all, exile did not rupture a smooth narrative that, whiggishly, was tending toward some apotheosis of South African jazz. Its effects were far more drastic. </p>
<p>Exile sundered a finely knit network of journalists like Todd Matshikiza, poets like Keorapetse Kgositsile, writers like Es’kia Mphahlele, and artists like Dumile Feni, from the dramatists, broadcasters, audiences and photographers who together made up mid-twentieth century South African jazz cultures. Returning the exiled musical imagination means renewing these connections: not perfectly, but imaginatively. </p>
<h2>Pictures from history</h2>
<p>In the absence of a rich sonic archive, jazz’s visual history is important. </p>
<p>Owen-Smith’s photographs join a body of documentary photography dating back decades.</p>
<p>In Lars Rasmussen’s <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/cape-town-jazz-1959-1963/">Cape Town Jazz 1959-1963</a>, Hardy Stockmann’s photographs predominantly depict a non-racial and convivial atmosphere of backstage fraternising, laughter, eating, drinking and smoking, of jam sessions and performances in Cape Town’s legendary jazz clubs, halls and other locations. </p>
<p>The jazz historian Christopher Ballantine describes <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Beyond_the_Blues.html?id=EfGyWqgkikYC&redir_esc=y">Basil Breakey’s photographs</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Here, in these stark images of loneliness, anguish, resilience, and despair, are many of the most famous members of that fabulously talented young generation that lived through the deepening gloom of the 1960s. Typically, their eyes are closed, or hidden by shades; when they play, the intensity is palpable, but no one appears to be listening; so in the end (the images seem to suggest) they sit alone, their instruments fallen silent.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Jazz scholar Jonathan Eato counters Breakey’s dark representation and Ballantine’s bleak reading. In <a href="http://electricjive.blogspot.com/2013/11/keeping-time-order-yours-now.html">Keeping Time</a>, he writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the musicians in Ian Bruce Huntley’s photographs offer people a brighter world that is touched by colour … the shades hiding the eyes of musicians do so as a consequence of music sounding under gloriously clear skies. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296683/original/file-20191011-96257-1dmtvjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296683/original/file-20191011-96257-1dmtvjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296683/original/file-20191011-96257-1dmtvjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296683/original/file-20191011-96257-1dmtvjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296683/original/file-20191011-96257-1dmtvjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296683/original/file-20191011-96257-1dmtvjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296683/original/file-20191011-96257-1dmtvjp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The ordinary is extraordinary in the photos, which show music transcending apartheid.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Norman Owen-Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Owen-Smith’s photographs enter these debates in interesting ways. As an historical musicologist, what strikes me is that whereas the photographers I have mentioned aim to capture the jazz ethos of an era, he captures an event in one place: a once-off concert. In so doing, Owen-Smith invites us to consider how photography can help answer Christopher Small’s ever relevant question about “musicking”: What does it mean when this performance … takes place at this time, in this place, with these participants?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125163/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lindelwa Dalamba receives funding from the National Research Foundation (Thuthuka) Grant (#106960). Funding for this project was provided by the Arts Research Africa (ARA) Wits School of Arts Public Humanities Grant, and by NEST: Narrative Enquiry for Social Transformation.</span></em></p>A rare set of photographs of South Africa’s most famous jazz ensemble, the Blue Notes, has added valuable insights to the music archiveLindelwa Dalamba, Music lecturer, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/838242017-09-11T19:59:03Z2017-09-11T19:59:03ZRemembering the Blue Notes: South Africa’s first generation of free jazz<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185496/original/file-20170911-1323-1k3awnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African trumpeter, Marcus Wyatt.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Muntu Vilakazi/Sunday Times</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“We were all kind of rebels,” drummer Louis Tebogo Moholo-Moholo <a href="https://www.allaboutjazz.com/louis-moholo-moholo-louis-moholo-moholo-by-marc-medwin.php">recalls</a>, “so, like birds of a feather, [we] flocked together.”</p>
<p>He’s talking about the Blue Notes, a multiracial modern jazz outfit formed in Cape Town in the early 1960s. White composer and pianist <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/chris-mcgregor-mn0000005666">Chris McGregor</a> joined forces with some of the most radical young black players on the city’s scene: alto saxophonist <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/dudu-pukwana-mn0000210863/biography">Dudu Pukwana</a>, tenor saxophonist <a href="http://electricjive.blogspot.co.za/2011/10/do-you-remember-nick-moyake.html">Nikele Moyake</a>, trumpeter <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/mongezi-feza-mn0000587887">Mongezi Feza</a>, bassist <a href="http://electricjive.blogspot.co.za/search?q=Johnny+Dyani">Johnny Mbizo Dyani</a> and <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/louis-moholo-mn0000227171/biography">Moholo-Moholo</a>, the only original Blue Note still alive and working. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_gnsZPppeIU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Jazz drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo discussing playing under apartheid restrictions.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv01538/04lv01828/05lv01829/06lv01857.htm">Apartheid restrictions</a> and the defiant, joyful freedom of the group’s music meant <a href="http://electricjive.blogspot.co.za/search?q=the+blue+notes">gigs were scarce</a>, and the human tensions of operating in such a climate were corrosive. The Blue Notes left South Africa in 1964 for an engagement at the <a href="https://www.seeantibes.com/events/calendar/jazz-a-juan">Antibes Jazz Festival</a> in France. Moyake was forced home by ill-health shortly afterwards; the others stayed. </p>
<p>Moholo-Moholo returned home in 2005. Despite international acclaim, he found performance space for his adventurous concepts in South Africa as scarce as it had ever been. Meanwhile, the recordings and achievements of the Blue Notes remained obscure in South Africa, while they are legendary in the European jazz community.</p>
<h2>Music is gold</h2>
<p>That’s changing. On September 22, trumpeter Marcus Wyatt launches the debut recording of his <a href="http://www.jhblive.com/Events-in-Johannesburg/live-music/the-blue-notes-tribute-band/24895">Blue Notes Tribute Orkestra</a> in Johannesburg. In a recent interview with me Wyattt declares the work of McGregor, Dyani, Pukwana and the rest as “gold”, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Not many people knew about it, but it’s music people should know.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>His project is just one flower of a slow growing interest in recovering the legacy that seems finally to be breaking into bloom.</p>
<p>In Europe, the Blue Notes startled staid jazz scenes. Photographer <a href="http://www.snapgalleries.com/portfolio-items/val-wilmer/">Valerie Wilmer</a> said they,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>literally upturned the London jazz scene, helping to create an exciting climate in which other young players could develop their own ideas about musical freedom.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Pianist <a href="http://www.mindyourownmusic.co.uk/keith-tippett.htm">Keith Tippett</a> was one of those. He <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/1996-04-19-weaving-the-tapestry-of-jazz">recalls</a> performances at <a href="https://www.ronniescotts.co.uk/">Ronnie Scott’s 100 Club</a> in London:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We played with everybody, but the Blue Notes – sometimes more than other British musicians – enfolded us and encouraged us… there was an inherent freedom and flexibility in the playing, coupled with impressive technique and a robust muscularity I’d never heard live before.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185505/original/file-20170911-1368-1ywd063.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185505/original/file-20170911-1368-1ywd063.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185505/original/file-20170911-1368-1ywd063.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185505/original/file-20170911-1368-1ywd063.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185505/original/file-20170911-1368-1ywd063.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185505/original/file-20170911-1368-1ywd063.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185505/original/file-20170911-1368-1ywd063.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chris McGregor.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cuneiform Records</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Wilmer likened what landed in London to the sound of a “Soweto shebeen” – but that geography is out by a thousand kilometres. Ideas from the Xhosa music – complex rhythms; overtone singing; the oscillating harmonics of stretched bowstrings; a heterophony of voices, each cycling through its own sequence of notes and beats – have infused Eastern Cape jazz. From the work of pioneering bandleaders such as <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=_fwkCIKoTpgC&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=Christopher+Ngcukana&source=bl&ots=NHJgm1D__n&sig=0miPiFoQ7mwgpnXAjFcKh0qBF2w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjlkfyYgp3WAhUHWRoKHR-mAgwQ6AEIPjAF#v=onepage&q=Christopher%20Ngcukana&f=false">Christopher Columbus Ngcukana</a> in the 1950s right through to current players such as <a href="http://www.theorbit.co.za/andile-yenana/">Andile Yenana</a> and <a href="http://www.theorbit.co.za/fezile-feya-faku/">Feya Faku</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Lk2LdoPmu9U?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Andile Yenana and Feya Faku discuss the Xhosa Influence on South African jazz.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What is still the sound of family ceremonies, even in the cities, fostered ways of hearing music – not as one straight line, but rather as a collection of braided paths – relevant and useful for young musicians exploring the relationship between freedom and collectivity in jazz.</p>
<h2>Post-liberation generation</h2>
<p>By the mid-1990s, post-liberation, a younger generation of South African jazz players were travelling, and hearing about the Blue Notes from musicians abroad. The late pianist <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/feb/15/guardianobituaries2">Moses Molelekwa</a> reflected in an interview I did with him in 1995: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’ve learned how you can just put musicians together in a room and make music that’s good enough to record: free improvisation. People tell me Chris McGregor worked like this, but although he was a South African, I can’t find his recordings here.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185499/original/file-20170911-31764-19k08fv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185499/original/file-20170911-31764-19k08fv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185499/original/file-20170911-31764-19k08fv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185499/original/file-20170911-31764-19k08fv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185499/original/file-20170911-31764-19k08fv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185499/original/file-20170911-31764-19k08fv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185499/original/file-20170911-31764-19k08fv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The late pianist Moses Molelekwa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mbuzeni Zulu/Sowetan</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Saxophonist <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/zimasile-ngqawana">Zim Ngqawana</a> (who died in 2011) <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/1997-02-28-ngqawanas-new-rhythm">called</a> his own improvisation “second generation South African free jazz” in , in acknowledgement of the first generation, which he’d learned about from Moholo-Moholo during a tour to Norway in 1996.</p>
<p>That’s how it was for Wyatt too, initially introduced to the Blue Notes opus by South African-born reedman <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/sean-bergin-mn0000840144">Sean Bergin</a> in Amsterdam,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>though I’d heard older musicians here talking, especially about Mongezi and Dudu.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He describes the new album as,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a heritage project: a tribute, not appropriation or a set of covers, but applying fresh voices and ideas to amazing material. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Wyatt’s interest deepened when he was commissioned by <a href="http://www.chimurenga.co.za/chimurenga-magazine">Chimurenga</a>’s Ntone Edjabe to arrange Blue Notes music for a 2011 Johannesburg <a href="http://panafricanspacestation.org.za/?s=forest+in+the+zoo">concert</a> themed around exile and xenophobia.</p>
<p>As Moholo-Moholo famously phrased it: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Exile is a fucker.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>History of exploitation</h2>
<p>There’s sensitivity in South Africa about appropriation; understandable in the context of a history of highly exploitative music industry relationships. In the course of untangling publishing rights for the material, Wyatt has consulted McGregor’s widow, son and brother, and Moholo-Moholo, among others. He supports concerns about proper attribution: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>That’s important. You can – and should – claim royalties. But you can’t claim music. Music is shared love, and when it spreads, it’s one of the more positive viruses around.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Untangling rights wasn’t the only challenge Wyatt faced. He says transcribing the music was also demanding,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>because of the denseness of the sound; the energy on the stage just taking it higher and higher.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Wyatt’s project was recorded at the Birds Eye Club in Switzerland, with a Swiss/South African ensemble comprising vocalist/trombonist Siya Makuzeni, pianist Afrika Mkhize, reedmen Donat Fisch and Domenic Landolf, bassist Fabian Gisler and drummer Ayanda Sikade.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zRW4Gc0HOp4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Blue Notes Tribute Orkestra performing Dudu Pukwana’s ‘Angel Nomali’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The personnel won’t stay constant in live performances. Wyatt envisages the kind of moveable feast McGregor later presided over in his later big band, the <a href="http://cuneiformrecords.com/bandshtml/brotherhood.html">Brotherhood of Breath</a>, showcasing the highly individual strengths of different soloists. But that individuality was always grounded in the shared musical understanding the Blue Notes hammered out in their work together:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They really were a band and you can hear it. Sometimes groups here forget that and offer ‘free’ music without that bedrock.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Wyatt’s album is not the only project in the pipeline descended from South Africa’s first generation of free jazz. Pianist <a href="http://www.theorbit.co.za/nduduzo-makhathini/">Nduduzo Makhathini</a> has recently spoken of a growing interest in the music of the Blue Notes. And Moholo-Moholo himself has finally found the right collaborators with whom to record in South Africa: in late October he will preside over the launch of the <a href="http://www.concertssa.co.za/event/born-to-be-black-the-orbit/">“Born to Be Black”</a> album with the <a href="http://www.theorbit.co.za/amandla-freedom-ensemble/">African Freedom Ensemble</a>, formed by new-generation trumpeter Mandla Mlangeni.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cquVBB0DdSk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Louis Moholo-Moholo with an early version of ‘Born to be Black’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Wyatt searches for a while to find precisely the right words for what he finds so compelling about the Blue Notes’ music. Eventually, he settles on a paradoxical combination: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>relentless energy – they definitely weren’t a band who looked at their watches to see how long they’d played!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Plus,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>being completely comfortable in the free space.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Possibly, that’s a lesson that needs to come home in political as well as musical terms.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83824/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When they arrived in Europe in the early 1960s, South African jazz outfit the Blue Notes revolutionised the London scene. Half a century later, their music is coming home in several new projects.Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.