South Africa is a country with a rich musical heritage and a unique
history. However it is important to note that "African" music in and of
itself is not a genre. Note the inverted comas, they are used to imply
and indicate that the stereotypes associated with such an expression are
dated and limited in their applicability. African music is all music.
Later this year Dj Okapi and Shane Cooper will release a new
compilation showcasing the diversity and variety of the rising South
African Jazz scene. https://www.rushhour.nl/record/vinyl/new-horizons-2" rel="nofollow - "New Horizons: Young Stars of South African Jazz"
will showcase an array of up and coming musicians and artists, shining a
light on their music and their experiences as individuals whilst
reflecting on the cultural, social and political relevancy that jazz
holds in South Africa. The compilation will feature Thandi Ntuli, Kyle
Shepherd, Mabuta, Yonela Mnana, Zoë Modiga, Benjamin Jephta, Siya
Makuzeni, Lwanda Gogwana, Mandisi Dyantyis, Reza Khota, Bokani Dyer and
Vuma Levin as well as a number of other players and musicians.
There is no one given narrative prescribed to Jazz, it is many things
to many people and this collection of stories helps to cultivate and
define the experience of a rising musician in South Africa.
http://soundcloud.com/afrosynth/sets/afs049-new-horizons" rel="nofollow - http://soundcloud.com/afrosynth/sets/afs049-new-horizons
Describe your relationship with jazz music from a personal perspective - what drew you to the style and genre?
“I'm attracted to the energy you feel from playing the music live
with other musicians. It comes from a space of exploration,
risk-taking, and the push-and-pull that the "conversation" amongst the
musicians have on stage. Also as a bass player I'm working in a space
of rhythm constantly, and the variations on time feel and rhythm
sensibility is entirely unique and dynamic from player to player - it's
the most life-affirming experience.” - Shane Cooper, Mabuta
“I got into improvised music and jazz through a mentor/guitar teacher
in my teens. The allure was around the idea that it represented the
highest achievement of the soul. I was also drawn to the seemingly
endless depth of brilliant possibility. At a young age this was a world
of real magic and freedom. All the musicians I was into were like
shamans or dervishes to me. This early relationship to the music has
continued to shape my approach, attitude and aesthetic. Music is for me a
practical and demonstrable metaphor for becoming attuned to the
sensory/perceptual feedback of self to the world. An ongoing play
between self and environment that unlocks the practitioner to processes
of internal refinement. A knowledge that can overflow into other areas
of living.” - Reza Khota
eza Khota credit Jacqui van Staden
“I love the impact that music has on peoples lives and how it is a
soundtrack to life experiences for many. For me, jazz music has
childhood nostalgia I can relive every time I listen to certain records.
I think of my family and the very intimate memories that will live with
me for a life time. I live that even with that nostalgia that art form
is constantly evolving and growing.” - Zoe Modiga
“In terms of my exposure to jazz, on a subconscious level, it stems
from the love for music that my father has and the music I remember
hearing at home. I remember hearing the music of Nina Simone, Hugh
Masekela, Abdullah Ibrahim, Earl Klugh, Miriam Makeba and many more at
home. I also remember hearing the sounds of jazz blaring from our next
door neighbour's speakers every Sunday. I only became consciously aware
of jazz as a musical direction I wanted to pursue in 2006. I was on a
gap year after high school, staying in England, and I was exposed to the
concept of improvisation through a pianist I met there. He was playing a
beautiful piece of music without any music in front of him and being a
classical musician, I thought he had just memorized a song he had learnt
off sheet music. I asked him what song he was playing and he said he
was improvising. Because I wanted to learn how to compose music, this
ability to improvise and make such great music intrigued me. He advised
me to study jazz and I haven’t looked back since.” - Thandi Ntuli
“I don’t think I was drawn to jazz as such, I think it’s just been
something that I was born around.. and it was never really ‘jazz’. I was
surrounded by a lot of black music, so lots of R&B, even at the
time bubblegum disco – Brenda Fassie and whatever. All of those things
also find their own presence in what people tend to understand as jazz…
As I grew, I got to hear stuff - from Mankunku, and Sibongile Khumalo
(etc), from a friend of my mother, who I’d go to in my high school
(years). And obviously eventually I got to be able to study it at
varsity. But that was an interesting form of what they understand as
jazz, versus what I knew to be jazz, because the way it is taught,
people sit at a desk and they tell you about the theoretical structure,
which is kind of like something that I feel was moving the music away
from what it is. I suppose that’s what analysis tends to do - it tends
to have this kind of imperialistic outlook on something, and that any
other thing that is other than what they prescribe is not the thing…
But at the end of the day I like it because I find that it is the
best way that people can actually find expression and expand themselves
both physically and spiritually.” - Yonela Mnana
“I had a very late start to Jazz. Growing up my dad used to play
records like A Love Supreme and Kind of Blue around the house but I
never consciously registered the experience. The first jazz recording I
consciously listened to was charlie parker playing a night in tunisia, I
must have been about 14 years old and I really really did not like it. I
remember being rather bemused by the seemingly atonal improvisations
and confusing harmonies. In my teenage years I listened to a lot of
early Coldplay stuff and Radiohead. Through this I transitioned into
listening to Portishead, Morcheeba and Massive Attack. The harmonic and
sometimes melodic language that these bands used often resonated with
various strands of jazz music (Beth Gibbons is famously influenced by
Billie Holiday for example) and it was through the love of this language
that I gravitated towards jazz.
I fell in love with Jazz guitar after watching a Woody Allen movie
called Sweet and Lowdown about a fictitious Jazz guitar player, Emmert
Ray. This movie along with me hearing important jazz records just as I
left high school convinced me that I wanted to devote my life to the
study of this music. Watching stalwarts of South African Jazz such as
Marcus Wyatt, Herbie Tsoeli, Carlo Mombelli, Feya Faku and so many more
was also important to my development. I went on to study with the great
Johnny Fourie then in Amsterdam with got lessons and received
masterclasses from guitarists such as Jesse van Ruller, Lage Lund, Kurt
Rosenkwinkel and Peter Bernstein among others.
Despite the importance Jazz occupies in my life it only informs a
part of my own compositional process (and hence relationship to this
music). I consider my music making to be the sum of my social and by
extension musical history. In the act of creation, I attempt to
summarise and abstract upon myself as an existential and political
actor. To this end, it is unavoidable that I draw on every piece of
music that has been meaningful to me throughout my development - jazz,
yes but also Radiohead, The Pharcyde, Portishead, Messaien, The Strokes,
Dr Dre and so much more.” - Vuma Levin
Jazz has often been deemed political in its nature and style. Is
this something which you can relate to? Do you seek to use jazz as a
means of political expression?
“I think my writing has usually been more about creating imaginary
worlds for the listener and the player to explore. However I think the
fact that most jazz artists are independent and uncompromising in their
artistic vision is in itself a political act, where art and process is
still given the value it deserves without being subject to capitalist
validation. Also the fact that the borders created by genres are broken
down in jazz music, I think this is critical in the arts.” - Shane
Cooper, Mabuta
“Indeed! We are privileged to be awakened to metaphysical and
epistemological questions. Artists who have put in sincere time and
effort are natural philosophers. It is then our duty to speak out on
injustice and to share our thoughts on the more difficult questions and
contradictions of our time.” - Reza Khota
“I think music is a reflection of life and with that being said, it
is then quite necessary for it to exist in all spectrums of life.
Political views and opinions are an important part of this.I feel my
music wishes to exist in all spaces and evoke emotion, challenge certain
constructs and document the times.” - Zoe Modiga
Zoe Modiga credit Tatenda Chidora
“Music for me is a form of self-expression that helps me express
things that often I find it hard to do normally. I’ve always turned to
music to try and express deeper feelings or perspectives that I had.
Even when I was a young writer, fiddling with rudimentary ideas on the
piano in high school. I don’t generally write with the intention of
"being political” in my message, but many times I do tell stories that
are personal to me and/ or that move me. As a black woman from South
Africa, politics affects so much of my day to day experience and so when
that comes through in the music I write, it is not from a fictitious
perspective but quite simply biographical. Like the band Skunk Anansie
say, “everything’s politikal!”. I think that, and not being political
for the sake of being political, is the true expression of the
innovators of this music we call Jazz. The music cannot be separated
from the life experiences of those who used it as a means of
expression.” - Thandi Ntuli
“I believe jazz has always been in a way a political thing, but I
don’t think it’s an exclusive identity of what jazz is. I think that
would be very – what do you call it in English? – reductionist, it would
really reduce its value and its intention in itself. But yes I think
just the act of deciding to play jazz is really a political posture - in
different ways.
In South Africa, to play jazz was a discouraged effort because jazz
to the white people that were living in South Africa at that time
(historically), was a form of high art. And to be able to regard black
players as people that are capable of doing that type of art form, would
be going against the grain of apartheid and colonialism that regarded a
black man as somebody that was really incapable of - or at least close
to subhuman, somebody that was devoid of intellect … And that explains
also why corporates were very reluctant to record and invest in a lot of
jazz at that time.
Jazz is political also in America in different way, while South
African white people discouraged it, white American corporates exploited
it, in a way that the companies were able to actually profit from their
management of the art that was dominant at that time, which is
something that is more analogous to…” - Yonela Mnana
“I can definitely relate to this. I think that so many others have
written about Jazz's status as a political music, that it represents the
rehearsal and performance of an ideal, as yet unrealised self
actualised Black American self and truly egalitarian American state. In a
South African context South African Jazz functioned in a similar
fashion. Technically, being a musician was not an occupation reserved
for people of colour during Apartheid, furthermore it offered a means of
self definition and self assertion during in the face of white minority
rule and brutality. In this way, whether wittingly or unwittingly,
being a musician became an act of defiance. Later Abdullah Ibrahims
seminal recording which featured Mannenburg not only represented a
political undertaking for the above reasons but also an exercise in
Black Existentialism: An attempt to create a cultural common denominator
that reified an as yet unrealised black South African self. It is in
this vein that I think most contemporary Jazz operates. It is an
exercise in negotiating identity. An attempt to create hybrid forms that
bring together various cultural signifiers in the composers orbit at
the time of creation. In doing so, the performers and composers are
involved in rehearsing and performing as yet unrealised post - apartheid
South African selves in the language of affect and abstraction without
the burden of words. This is both a deeply existential and political
act.” - Vuma Levin
Vuma Levin credit Natasha Laurent
From a cultural perspective, do you feel the music lends itself to your own political and cultural struggles?
“Yes, jazz music is a very sophisticated artform built on the common
ground of many cultures. It is borne first out of various African
musical roots. I believe music connects time and history to the present
and has immense power, in some ways more than languages of the tongue.
If you don't have true respect for the roots of this music, you will
not be able to play it - it will wrestle you to the ground. Those that
play it with respect for the roots, can use it as a force for change in
this era of extreme divisiveness and oppression.” - Shane Cooper, Mabuta
“Absolutely. I’d like to feel that music has created a space for me
to freely express my political and cultural realities. Cementing this is
important.” - Zoe Modiga
“Of course I think the music lends itself to my political and
cultural struggles, in many ways. One is the fact that to play jazz, it
is a situation where you are able to claim your freedom and make use of
it to say whatever that you want to say, so it’s beautiful to have that
sort of tabula rasa (bank slate). And in my case (as someone who is
visually impaired), firstly I find that as opposed to classical music,
which actually required me to play the written note, jazz serves much
more for me as a signposting, a guiding principal to be able to explore
and find out what I want to say.
And when you mention sociological things, in fact jazz has many
positions in South Africa, in the sense that to date, jazz has now
become part of the ‘high arts’. It has become very inaccessible, which
is something that is very strange, because it was the music of the
common man. Now people dress up to (see) it, and people have to pay lots
and lots of money. And people that study it have to actually pay more
money to institutions and to people to teach them, which renders the art
almost as something that is extinct, and I feel from it that it is
actually our prerogative to bring it closer to the people, or to figure
out how relevant it can be to the people.” - Yonela Mnana
Yonela Mnana credit Rangoato Hlasane
“Yes and No. Music definitely operates as a semiotic system and it's
signifying power lends itself towards being tied into non-musical
struggles. Having said that, in the absence of words (instrumental
music) meaning in instrumental music is complex, emergent and slippery.
Of course words suffer from the same issues but the added layers of
abstraction in music do complicate matters. When words ARE involved
however, things change. From my personal perspective, my own music is
deeply political and speaks directly to my own struggles for self
actualisation. I am a half black, half jewish, swazi born South African.
I have a deeply hybrid identity. Issues around home, belonging and the
identification of a self with respect to a collective other has been
very difficult for me. As I said before my music is an attempt to bring
together the various musical signs and signifiers that have informed who
and what I am. The syncretic forms birthed by this process are in turn
an attempt to rehearse and perform a viable post apartheid South African
self all in the service of trying to find a spiritual home and space of
belonging.” - Vuma Levin
How would you define those struggles at present? How do you feel as a young musician growing up in South Africa?
“Being a performing jazz musician in South Africa is practically
unviable and unsustainable as a result of the bad economic landscape.
In a country where the people have been (and continue to be) so
violated economically, access to live music has been removed from the
majority of people's lives. So in a country with such a large
population there are almost no venues to perform this music. Touring
within the country is super expensive and almost never viable. We try
to tour abroad but face immense challenges having to jump through
endless hoops to apply for visas, and struggle with a weak currency for
logistics costs. Often artists from SA trying to play in Europe or USA
are scrutinised first by a "Western gaze" - of what represents their
version of "African" or "World Music". - only those that are deemed
"African enough" are allowed through the gates. It's a form of cultural
colonialism... However, despite these struggles the musicians continue
to create art on a high level. Why? There is something profound about
this music when you know it's not built on the music industry's model.
It is art that is made because it contains stories that need to be
told.” - Shane Cooper, Mabuta
“Today’s struggles are exponential. The cognitive and ethical
mistakes that were at the root of slavery and colonialism came back to
Europe to bite in the form of nazism and fascism. In other words, these
violent aberrations were already seeded within the duplicity of
(European) enlightenment thinking in its borders versus the colonies.
Our concept of the human remains broken still today, as a result of this
cognitive disjuncture. Fascism is again on the rise globally. This time
it’s weapons of coercion, surveillance, terrorism and oppression are
enhanced through the techno-digital interface and the unhindered rise of
oligarchies. Our task in the arts and humanities is to think of a new
concept of the human. One in which, fascism, inequality and structural
violence are not possible. As a young brown musician growing up in SA. I
have always had to work harder and prove myself in contexts where the
old racial hierarchy reared it’s ugly head. Even if you are at the top
of your game, there’s always going to be some idiot who undermines you
because of your skin colour. Fortunately I don’t give an F anymore! We
will make the racists irrelevant and show their stupidity for what it
is.” - Reza Khota
“At the core if everything, I feel my place in the world is something
to engage and heal. Being a young, black, African woman means something
and I feel a lot that I identify as has been demeaned and defaced
throughout history. Reclaiming this journey from my perspective and in
my expression is an important part of being able to confront my
realities and take to task all the systems put in place to create my
reality and the reality of my people.
My experience is layered and takes on many shapes, with that being
said, I’d need the world to create space for people like me and
challenge all the social, economic constructs that make me a shadow in
this world.” - Zoe Modiga
“Well that’s a loaded question. I think the music I write can speak
to that best. As a young musician growing up in South Africa I feel
overwhelmed with pride for the rich and beautiful cultural heritage we
have here and in the continent at large.” - Thandi Ntuli
Thandi Ntuli credit Victor Dlamini
“I feel that it is possible that the South Africans that I live among
could have taken advantage and enjoyed jazz as a way of expression, and
as an art form, but I feel that my people in the townships and in the
outskirts of suburbia are the victims of consumerism, and capitalism,
that sells them a source of outlet that is really not quite rewarding,
that is very much marginal, I think maybe similar to all the other
intoxicating things, that tend to propagated as much as some of the
contemporary musical works are sold… The fact that their access to the
internet and all the other information sources are limited, with the
barriers of money and marginal information, our people have not really
discovered it in that way, so there lies again another kind of struggle,
where we have to return the music to the people and the people to the
music. That’s one struggle.
Alongside that kind of struggle is the fact that if the people, such
as people in my family and my friends, as they are, if they’re used to
these other kinds of art forms, it is hard for them to actually
understand what I am actually working towards, or to actually enjoy
those things. And the worst part, more especially in South Africa, is
that because a lot of patronage in terms of jazz is from white people,
most of our performances tend to be played in places that are far
removed from our people. And because of the infrastructure, such as
transport, and money, most of them are not able to enjoy it, which is
something that is very strange, because the development of jazz actually
thrived in the communities where the musicians (come from).” - Yonela
Mnana
“I think the broader struggle in South Africa lies in the death of
the first incarnation of the post Apartheid South African dream: Rainbow
Nationism. Since the turn of the millenium we are increasingly becoming
aware of ourselves as a nation that is not built upon some kind of geo
genetic ancestry but rather on the basis of what Bhabha described as a
set of shared mutually antagonistic histories. The trauma of these
histories and the tensions and contradictions they have spawned upon
racial, ethnic, gendered, class, national etc. lines is what South
Africa is trying to grapple with in the creation of a viable
post-Apartheid South African State. On a personal level we all suffer
from these same tensions and contradictions and it presents itself in
our art as well. For this reason, it is a good time to be a young
musician in South Africa because there is a lot to say at both a
personal and broader, social level. We are actively contributing to the
creation of new cultural role models for Black South Africa but also to
the mythology around which a new conception of the South African
national subject can coalesce.” - Vuma Levin
What would you like to see change within the South African music community?
“I would like to see more government support for sustainable music
venues across the country. With the funds controlled by the right
people, and a constant shifting of those in control to keep it diverse,
and to weed out corruption.” - Shane Cooper, Mabuta
Mabuta credit Aidan Tobias
“The music community that I’m part of is great. The governmental
support for and knowledge of the arts leaves much to be desired. Worse
still, real music is overshadowed by the hyper production of formula
based music who’s longevity resembles that of a cheap plastic toy
designed to break. That’s a global issue though, as is the devastation
caused by the major streaming platforms. I would like to see real
musicians get the acknowledgement and support that they deserve.” - Reza
Khota
“I’d like us as Africans and the African diaspora to see each other
and relate as a music community. I’d like more laws put in place by our
leaders to successfully establish an interconnectedness and sense of
family among us. I’d love us to be respected and appreciated by our
global community too.” - Zoe Modiga
“I’d love to see music programs in townships and rural areas where
learning music is really a privilege because of inaccessibility. I’d
love the curriculum of music in schools and universities to reflect this
part of the world and not just the Western perspective much more. I’d
love for music to be taught to all children in school, regardless of
their intention of making a career out of it. I am richer because of
having learnt how to play music, as a human being. To add I’d love the
world view of what African music is or isn’t to be expanded immensely.” -
Thandi Ntuli
“I think what I’d like to see change is the different kinds of
opportunities (available) to musicians. By that I mean that perhaps jazz
artists, real musicianship, has been marginalized, to this day. Maybe
we need to – I don’t know, through education or through corporate
interests, as government - maybe jazz musicians can be guided to be able
to influential in other avenues of people’s lives – in hospitals where
people are sick, in churches, all over. That would also make sure that
the musicians wouldn’t squabble amongst themselves, because they think
or because they’re trying to get the minimum opportunities that are
granted. So that jazz musicians also would understand that they are not
just working hard to be able to get awards and to be able to record
albums only, that they have the opportunity to make a difference… and a
difference to other people in general…
Perhaps also the direction of the music should be changed. I find, I
know amongst my friends, that people find when they explain what they’re
doing in English, and in big words, that they feel that they’re
actually explaining that music. It is very bizarre that, at least in
South Africa, a person understands themselves to be a professional
musician if they attain a semblance of western music, and ignore the
wealth that is laid down by all the South African artists that came
before us. Quite bizarre that someone intends to come from other places
to lecture on South African music. I think if we are able to change that
kind of thinking…” - Yonela Mnana
“We need a much greater deal of empowerment in formal spaces for
people of colour - universities etc. More initiatives to set up
performance venues and festivals. More corporate support for the arts.”
- Vuma Levin
Buy the record https://www.rushhour.nl/record/vinyl/new-horizons-2" rel="nofollow - HERE .
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