We’ve spent five minutes each with stars like Shirley Horn, Sarah Vaughan, Max Roach and John Coltrane. We’ve traveled together to New Orleans, and to the outskirts of the avant-garde. But we haven’t jumped past the boundaries of the United States. Let’s change that.
Perhaps no country outside North America has as rich, or original, a relationship to jazz music as South Africa. In the 1950s and ’60s, as the apartheid government enforced an increasingly brutal code of racial hierarchy, South African musicians, poets, artists, radical clergy and organizers found in this music a symbol of Black cosmopolitanism, interracial experimentation and free thought — all anathema to the regime.
Taking the swinging bravado of American beboppers as their model, young musicians in the mixed neighborhoods of Sophiatown, Johannesburg, and District Six, Cape Town, found their own uses for the techniques of jazz, layering them into regional traditions. In Johannesburg and the Eastern Cape, the vocal tradition of isicathamiya and the steady, Zulu and Xhosa dance rhythms of the regions exerted strong influence. In Cape Town, improvisers picked up on the carnival music of the townships’ Coloured population, a mix of Malaysian, Indian, Dutch, Khoisan and Black African heritages.
Many of the country’s greatest musicians wound up in exile, and figures like Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba, Dorothy Masuka, Johnny Dyani and Abdullah Ibrahim became de facto ambassadors for their country’s repressed population. But back home, the music continued to develop in the hands of figures like Kippie Moeketsi, Robbie Jansen and Dolly Rathebe.
After apartheid crumbled — three decades ago this spring — a new wave of musicians, in the so-called “born free” generation, came to jazz with their own set of questions, curious to feel out the meaning of the tradition when its ideals were no longer illicit. Since then, South African society has continued to evolve, and so has the music. (Not covered on this list: the amapiano boom that’s swept the world of late, and that’s definitely worth another five minutes of your time.)
Below you’ll find a sampling of South African recordings from the past 50 years, picked out for you by a mix of musicians, poets and scholars. You can find a playlist at the end of the article, and be sure to leave your own favorites in the comments.
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Claude Cozens, drummer
Abdullah Ibrahim, “African Marketplace”
There are so many different pieces and traditions from the many people and tribes of South Africa. “African Marketplace” by the legendary pianist Abdullah Ibrahim is a good introduction to our Cape Town jazz tradition. The strong goema rhythm is right there up front, banging hard and grooving. That just brings the vibe of Cape Town, it brings the vibe of the busy neighborhoods, busy suburbs, the hustle and the joyfulness that’s in the air. Despite all the challenges and the suffering that face us as a people and as a society, there’s always a choice to be joyful, to have a strong beat going in life, to feel the goema. So that is the attitude of the music, and that’s what I love about it. And it is definitely depicted in this piece.
You hear the way the brass is playing — that attitude, that dirt. It’s a simple melody and simple harmonies, it’s beautiful, nothing complicated. And yet in the phrasing, the tone of the way they’re playing it, there’s an attitude that counters the rhythm while also joining the rhythm. As far as Abdullah, he’s putting so, so much feel, with that I-IV-V chord progression. So I just love it personally, and it’s a nice way for people to sort of get the spirit of the music.
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Thandiswa Mazwai, vocalist
Philip Tabane, “Ngwana O Ya Lela”
This is one of my favorite South African songs of all time. I have never been able to define what jazz is, so this may not even be “jazz,” but here we are. What this is, is Malombo music. Deeply rooted in the divine, it is laced with traditional drums and an almost blues-like guitar, while Philip Tabane vocalizes and laments about a weeping child. No matter the subject of his work it always seems to carry a rhapsodic energy exuded by the rhythmic beating of the drums every time they reveal themselves. This is music that, for me, lives comfortably within the realm of South African jazz. Embedded with folk music, it emanates an undeniable “South African-ness” while also being very much of the world.
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Bokani Dyer, pianist
Hugh Masekela, “Nomali”
Unmistakably South African jazz, this whole album is one of my favorites. Released in 1994, the year of South Africa’s first democratic election, “Hope” is a live LP that captures the spirit of South Africa and also feels like a window into Hugh Masekela’s journey in music — from his roots to his time in America and his collaborations with other African artists. This gem of a song, “Nomali,” is a composition by Caiphus Semenya dedicated to his life partner and collaborator, Letta Mbulu. Semenya is probably known more for his work as a songwriter and producer, but he also penned some remarkable instrumental pieces. (Another that springs to mind is “Caution,” recorded by the Union of South Africa, a collaboration project featuring Semenya, Hugh Masekela and Jonas Gwangwa.)
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Linda Sikhakhane, saxophonist
Winston “Mankunku” Ngozi, “Dedication (To Daddy Trane and Brother Shorter)”
In the midst of apartheid in South Africa back in 1968, a 25-year-old Winston “Mankunku” Ngozi released what would be a classic record, “Yakhal’ Inkomo” — a portal that would serve as a compass for the future of jazz in South Africa while projecting a deep level of solidarity with the African diaspora.
“Dedication (To Daddy Trane and Brother Shorter)” is one of the two original pieces that are featured on Mankunku’s debut record, with a special quartet featuring the pianist Lionel Pillay, the bassist Agrippa Magwaza and the drummer Early Mabuza. It is a dedication to two important African American jazz saxophonists, John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter, projecting kindredship that is evident in both the sound and title of the piece. It was released just a year after Coltrane’s passing, and I feel a deep sense of acknowledgment from Mankunku’s quartet as they tap into a bank of sounds in access of a collective memory.
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Percy Mabandu, art historian and writer
Zim Ngqawana, “Migrant Workers”
To be bold, I propose that “Migrant Workers,” by the late, great saxophonist and composer Zim Ngqawana, is more than a great example of South African jazz to fall in love with. It is the most South African jazz joint of all; an epic in the literary sense. The song tells the tale of migrant workers who’ve historically had to leave their homes in the hinterlands for big cities in search of a better day. South Africans are a people formed from myriad migrations.
The monumentality of these epic movements can all be heard in the brooding babble of the bass line; it’s in the bellowing ebullience of the reedy melodic theme; the crack and clank of the high hat and snare. The tension of mystery and revelation, the pathos and the hope, the search and discovery are crafted into the song’s propulsive charge. They tell of a trillion train rides, touched by tears and the cheeriness of strangers shaping themselves anew.
“Migrant Workers” appeared in 1997 on “San Song.” Just three years into South Africa’s experiment with democracy, the nation’s new humanist Constitution was barely seven months in effect; their story is in the music.
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Christopher Ballantine, musicologist and cultural critic
Mahube, “U Shonaphi Na?”
When apartheid ended in 1994, serious jazz musicians in South Africa embraced a fundamental question: In our new democracy, how might music help to shape our identities so as to construct new sorts of human connectedness? A strikingly impressive answer came from the work of Mahube, a jazz band put together in 1998 whose name is Sotho for “new dawn.” A fabulous 12-piece outfit made up of top local musicians from different backgrounds, it explicitly set out to make jazz that would be the very image of a democratic, egalitarian, nonracial future.
Mahube’s complex sonic weave is transgressive; it seeks to destabilize identities that have become too fixed and bounded. It opts for diversity, with musical entanglements that are seamlessly integrated. These include the marabi music of the early 20th-century urban slums; the maskanda music of Zulu migrant workers; the township jazz of the 1940s and ’50s; the isicathamiya idiom made famous by Ladysmith Black Mambazo; the vocal harmonizations and bouncy rhythms of later mbaqanga; endemic protest song; and even Shona mbira patterns from Zimbabwe or allusions to Congolese popular music of the 1950s. Symbolically, this is at once a thrilling subversion of the divisions of the old South African “political normal” and an ecstatic and irresistible evocation of a hoped-for cosmopolitanism.
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Kesivan Naidoo, drummer
Busi Mhlongo, “Amakholwa”
“Amakholwa” (“Believers”) is my favorite tune by Busi Mhlongo, who is for me one of the most spiritual, Afrofuturistic jazz musicians to come from South Africa. Obviously, her music is steeped in the Zulu tradition, but it speaks to a universal spirit, as she would say. For South Africa, she was sort of like the John Coltrane of the voice. Both artists were engaged in a deep-rooted spiritual quest through music. It’s funny, Coltrane also had a track called “The Believer.”
I think what’s most important for me with Busi is that she brought all the elements of our music into the voice, into dance, and into instrumentals. The way she does so-called scat singing is very much from a spiritual perspective: She’s calling on the ancestors. And especially if you saw her live, you’d say: Wow, this was something powerful. Even if you didn’t understand the words, just her presence was second to none. When people hear this track, with that thick modern groove to it, they’ll get why hers is still an important voice in the South African jazz scene, and why people loved her so much here.
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Herbie Tsoaeli, bassist
Zim Ngqawana, “Qula Kwedini”
Zim was always reminding me of the importance of our traditional cultural sounds. I remember sitting and speaking to him all night, in his house and then outside in his yard, at the fire, having our beverages. And he would be wearing a robe, as he was now a Muslim. Remember, he had played with Abdullah Ibrahim, so many of his teachings came from him. The discipline in his way of playing, as well. Anyway, that night, we were saying to each other: We are a cultural people. Let’s unearth our cultural values and things so that people can hear how we think, because we need to be heard. At some point, what’s the use of being on this earth if you can’t be heard?
Zim is from the Xhosa nation; in that language the word “iQula” can refer to a watering hole (as in Sesotho the word is “sediba”). But “Qula Kwedini” means something else — they used to sing that song when you were going to the mountains, for the transition from boyhood to manhood. This is normally led by men stick-fighting, which I think is a demonstration of the teachings and the learnings from the elders, of how this cultural practice is carried out. So this music can mean many things. For me, Zim nailed that so nicely, with the dignity it deserves.
When you hear that rhythm, the bass and the voice, it reminds one of home by understanding the sound. I’d guess other Xhosa-speaking people who know this ritual are happy with the interpretation in this song by Zim. This is our music, translated in terms of composition and melody. Our music has always been Hours of music.
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Nduduzo Makhathini, pianist
Bheki Mseleku, “Monwabisi”
American jazz records reached South Africa’s shores in the 1920s. Since these early engagements with the art form, the country has developed various musical forms under the rubric known as South African jazz. Some of the exponents of this creation are Abdullah Ibrahim, Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela.
For the most part this music developed under the difficulties of apartheid, which resulted in many artists fleeing to exile in Europe and the United States. What you experience in “Monwabisi” is an articulation of this music in “post-apartheid” South Africa via a subgenre called marabi. Here, the composer and pianist Bheki Mseleku had just returned home from exile in London, and he was grappling with notions of home and thinking about a “sounding” of home. He is joined on this session by local musicians (and “inxiles” who remained in the country) such as the saxophonist Winston “Mankunku” Ngozi (who wrote another classic titled “Yakhal’ Inkomo”) and the trumpeter Feya Faku, among others.
Enjoy as the sound takes you through the beautiful landscapes of South Africa that are haunted by the peculiar echoes of our history.
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Sandile Ngidi, poet and critic
Bheki Khoza, “Mama”
The South African guitarist, pianist, teacher and bandleader Bheki Khoza composed “Mama” in honor of his mother, who, despite her husband’s presence, largely raised her children alone. However, after he had performed the song publicly a few times, the Durban-born musician rededicated the song to all mothers who found themselves in similar if not worse situations. “It shocked me so much to see that ours was not the only home in which alcoholism had rendered a father materially absent, in the sense that they were irresponsible and could not support their families,” Khoza told me in a conversation recently. “The song talks about all such mothers, who have seen it all, yet did their best to raise children well into adulthood. It’s my tribute to their tenacity.”
“Mama” is further inspired by the great tradition of African griots, especially the izimbongi of Southern Africa, oral poet-historians of yore. The song blends a deft, four-bar, circular harmonic structure — rooted in ancient Zulu hymns known as amahubo — with crisp jazz influences reminiscent of McCoy Tyner, John Coltrane and Bheki Mseleku, to mention but some. “A lot is left to the musician to do as he or she pleases within the tune’s broad thematic framework,” Khoza explained. “So-called traditional music gets down with the modern beat, and creates magic in a memorable groove.”
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Mandla Mlangeni, trumpeter
Malcolm Jiyane Tree-O, “Life Esidimeni”
“Life Esidimeni,” from trombonist Malcolm Jiyane’s debut album, “Umdali,” weaves together a story of those forgotten and sometimes neglected by society. With its hauntingly lyrical trumpet improvisation, the piece laments an often neglected part of our recent history, the Life Esidimeni tragedy, which left 144 people dead at psychiatric facilities in the Gauteng province. Malcolm’s musical arrangement is both a reminder and an ode to the voiceless and dispossessed. Part of the pervasive beauty of South African jazz is that it recounts histories that we sometimes choose to forget or set aside. It is a clarion call to spare a thought for the sick and weary. Malcolm’s music holds a mirror to society to look at and listen to the plight of the unknown patients who died from starvation and neglect in the hands of the “government of the people.”
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Giovanni Russonello, jazz critic
Miriam Makeba, “Jolinkomo”
In 1960, trying to go home to South Africa to attend her mother’s funeral, Miriam Makeba learned that her passport had been revoked. She would not get home for 30 years. If the circumstances around Makeba’s life and work were often constrained by the uncertainties of exile, she also seemed to have the antidote: some inner sense of clarity and drive. That feeling is all over her work, and you can imagine how indispensable it was for her. While living abroad, mingling with artists and activists and diplomats, she discovered that the loneliness of exile also contained its opposite: solidarity. Musically, Makeba put the vocal traditions of South Africa into conversation with sounds from across the world, perhaps most excitingly after moving to Guinea in the later 1960s. She became close with the country’s political and cultural leaders; met her husband Kwame Ture; and of course put together a killer local band. In this 1977 performance, a twinkling West African lattice of guitars, percussion and bass fortify the old South African melody of “Jolinkomo,” a song that might originally have been sung without any instruments.
It can feel hard to categorize Makeba as ultimately a “jazz” musician. But suffice it to say that she carried a heritage of songs into a cosmopolitan mode, expanded listeners’ imaginations, and proved herself an ambassador for something more than music. Does that count?
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Carol Ann Muller, scholar
Kyle Shepherd, “Cape Genesis: Slave Labor”
The pianist Kyle Shepherd’s 2012 album, “South African History !X,” interrogates Cape Town history, the South African past, and — considering what DNA technology tells us about the origins of humanity — our shared global history, through the sounds of the musical bow and Khoisan “click” languages. The track on “South African History !X” that best speaks to us in the present moment is “Cape Genesis: Slave Labor.” It opens with the fundamental pitches of Shepherd’s mouth bow, its overtones shaped into a high-pitched melody and then enveloped in the improvisations of Zim Ngqawana’s tenor saxophone, the drummer Jono Sweetman’s percussive timbral sounding, and Shane Cooper’s tender bass lines. The album connects back to the historic sounds of the pianist and bow player Hilton Schilder (of Goema Club); the free improvisation of Garth Erasmus; and the sounds we now call “Cape jazz,” created by many, including Abdullah Ibrahim, Sathima Bea Benjamin, Robbie Jansen, Muneeb Hermans and Ramon Alexander. Decolonizing South African history begins with listening closely to the contours of its improvised music, as it takes us back into a deep African past.
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Thandi Ntuli, pianist
Andile Yenana, “Dream Walker”
The first reason I chose this song is that I wanted to avoid artists that many people gravitate toward, particularly those who became quite popular overseas, especially during the period of apartheid. For me, this song has a very distinct South African jazz sound. It’s much more modern and harmonically extended than the typical I-IV-V progression that many people are used to. I love hearing Andile Yenana’s contributions as a piano player, his texture and touch. Additionally, it features the beautiful arrangement styles and harmonic voicings of that particular period, which I’m really into. He worked with artists from the generation ahead of us, artists who stayed in South Africa and didn’t necessarily go into exile. During that era, a distinct sound developed, strongly influenced by American music yet deeply rooted in the South African music they grew up with. I feel so much relation to that.
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Darius Brubeck, pianist and author
Barney Rachabane, “Kwela Mama”
Barney Rachabane was South Africa’s premier alto player and featured on many S.A. jazz recordings from the 1960s onward. After appearing on Paul Simon’s 1986 “Graceland” album, he toured the world with Simon’s ensembles and with Afro-Cool Concept (a band I helped lead). His playing on this 1989 track is virtually a summation of S.A. jazz up to this point, at its most idiomatic. Listen to his cadenza-like introduction, ranging from screeching high-register glissandi to honking low notes to midrange, lightning-fast fills between phrases. His choruses veer between Township jive and bebop virtuosity. Yes, he is showing off, but his expressive intensity is as dazzling as his command of the alto saxophone: You can feel his pride, rapture, tenderness, humor and exultation at unleashing his volcanic prowess on the world. The track is a bit long; you can take it off after five minutes — but I bet you won’t.
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Seton Hawkins, scholar
McCoy Mrubata, “Face the Music”
The 1990s saw an extraordinary surge in new South African jazz records, as independent labels like Sheer Sound and MELT 2000 promoted a new generation of great artists. Among them was the saxophonist and flutist McCoy Mrubata. A leading light whose albums reflect a wide range of South African jazz styles, Mrubata hit an especially potent combination with 2002’s “Face the Music.” Its title track is a master class in his joyful writing and playing. Written as a celebration and embrace of local jazz styles, “Face the Music” also features sterling soloing by Mrubata as well as the trombonist Jabu Magubane and the pianist Paul Hanmer. Mrubata is still going strong — 2024 marks his 65th birthday and the release of a new album, the beautiful “Lullaby for Khayoyo” — and “Face the Music” remains an incredible entry point into his output as well as into South African jazz more broadly.
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The post 5 Minutes That Will Make You Love South African Jazz appeared first on New York Times.
