Four months before succumbing to his death, Hugh Masekela moved like a man determined to make his next meaningful contribution to music and our heritage in general.
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The divine message of Good News From Africa
Pianist Abdullah Ibrahim and the great bassist and composer Johnny Dyani got together in 1973 to create a marvellous South African jazz record- Good News From Africa.
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Jazz dancing and pantsula perfection
The gifted dancer as soloist improviser is a feature of black vernacular culture beyond the jazz session, though. The working women and men’s bodies as a site of gestured text come alive during protest as toyi-toyi, too.
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I F*ck With Every Record
All jazz records are connected, just like the lives and stories they contain. All albums are plugged into one another through an infinite web of band memberships, themes and composition revisitations.
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The Train and the Making of our Music
The railroad-borne movement of the people is a grand theme in the work of Zim Ngqawana, too. The late jazz composer’s most ambitious opus, a three-part suite titled Amagoduka (Migrant Workers), is concerned with the transformative power of the rails on the personhood of migrant workers.
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Jazz in the Key of Cow: Yakhal’inkomo and Jol’inkomo
The history of jazz, like the movement of cows as wealth, is often dodgily told as the story of gifted men making monumental moves.
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