SA Jazz greats to rock New York for freedom

The music of the 1950’s Jazz Epistles represented freedom. This is according to pianist and composer Abdullah Ibrahim as he prepares to take the stage in New York on Thursday to celebrate Freedom Day.

In a concert billed as an international reunion for some of the surviving band members, trumpet great Hugh Masekela was forced to withdraw at the last moment after suffering a fall and injuring his shoulder.

But another South African great Dorothy Masuka will open Thursday’s show, ensuring as one does in this business, that the show must go.

They settled on Dollar’s Moods when we showed up to the rehearsal studio – one of the original tracks that featured on the only album released by the Jazz Epistles in 1959.

And while reunions of the group have happened in South Africa, this would have been their international coming together again, as organizer Simon Rentner explains: “It came together when I basically learned about this story which happened about ten years ago and it was almost like one of these stories that was almost too good to be true, as a journalist we’re always looking for what’s the best story and this seemed to me the best story with the most iconic legendary players that nobody in America knew about that everyone should and the music itself that resulted from the story, is also as great.”

Abdullah Ibrahim, Hugh Masekela and Jonas Gwangwa the only surviving members of the original six Jazz Epistles, that included the late but hugely talented Kippie Moeketsi on sax, Johnny Gertze on bass and Makaya Ntshoko on drums, as the celebrated pianist and composer shared his memories of their time together in the 50s.

“We were young people at that time living under this horrendous thing that was being imposed on us and called Apartheid, denied us access to everything, it did could not, they could not deny us access to ourselves. So we practiced the music and went beyond these borders that they were trying to impose on us, those social borders, cultural borders. Cape Town public library, in Gardens, the big one, I read everything in there three times, this was the insatiable appetite that we had for freedom so when I met Kippie Moeketsi, an incredible musician.”

Since the passing of my friend Miriam Makeba, and since the passing of the great Nelson Mandela, our great icon, I’ve written a song for him which I would like people to listen to

Along with his band Ekaya whose been playing with him for several decades, Ibrahim believes the music then had to do with their humanity.

“Freedom, freedom because in all respects we were told we had to adapt to an acknowledge and submit to an order that in our understanding and our mentors and our cosmology, Apartheid – how can you throw anything out of the universe, complete insanity. So it doesn’t matter where you move people, where you move things, you are connected, interconnected. So it was a time also when people asserted their political will and of course the Jazz Epistles recording was done 6 months before the Sharpeville massacre.”

Up in the Bronx in a separate rehearsal space, a jazz singer who also came to popularity in the 1950s, singing in a trio with the late Miriam Makeba and Dolly Rathebe, Dorothy Masuka is the opening act.

“Since the passing of my friend Miriam Makeba, and since the passing of the great Nelson Mandela, our great icon, I’ve written a song for him which I would like people to listen to, it’s a happy song about him, thanking him for what he has done for us, for the world over and some other new things.”

At 81 this year, she believes the younger generation of musicians leaves much to be desired, particularly as it relates to the world around them.

“We sang a lot of material that had something to do with what was happening in the world – up to now, what’s happening in the world its just that this time studios would not record anything like that, if I had to write a song about what’s happening today in Africa, or what’s happening around the world today, they’d say no we cant sell this anywhere, so this is maybe why the youngsters don’t really care about what they’re singing about.”

Celebrating their freedom in New York City, with music as they did when they were still shackled by the chains of history.

from  www.sabc.co.za