The bellowing horn is stilled – farewell Mankunku

An article I posted elsewhere on the Web on the day Mankunku died. I have moved it here as I think it more appropriate.

A colossus on the South African jazz scene is no more

The mighty bellowing horn is stilled, and we shall not hear its like again. Winston “Mankunku” Ngozi died in the early hours of this morning, 13 October 2009, and one of the greatest of South African jazzmen is no more.
Mankunku, as he was known to generations of jazz fans, was a colossus on the jazz scene, a relatively small, unassuming, even shy, man. But when he picked up and blew that tenor he was enormous!
He was born in 1943 in Retreat, Cape Town, the first born of a musical family, he started to play the piano at age seven, later taking up trumpet and clarinet.
Mankunku took up the tenor in his teens, under the influence of a renowned older generation Cape Town tenorman, “Bra Cups” (or “Cup-and-Saucers”) Nkanuka.
He went on to play with almost all the greats of South African jazz, along the way making some splendid albums, though none achieved the success of his deservedly famous Yakhal' inKomo, recorded in 1968. This album has remained one of the top-selling jazz albums in South Africa ever since.

The band of stalwarts

Mankunku was one of the band of stalwart musicians who did not go into exile during the lean apartheid years. He preferred to stay with his people and make music as best as he could, which sometimes meant performing behind a curtain with an assumed name so as to circumvent the apartheid laws which prohibited blacks from sharing the stage with white performers.
A major, and acknowledged, influence on Mankunku was John Coltrane. One of his songs is called “Dedication – to Daddy Trane and Brother Silver” - a beautiful tribute to the musical influences.
Mankunku told, in an interview with Gwen Ansell, how important the spiritual aspect of the Coltrane influence was (this is recounted in Gwen Ansell's great book Soweto Blues, Continuum, 2004): “I know you think I'm a naughty old man, but most of the time, when I'm playing, I'm really praying. I used to dream of Coltrane. And one time in the '60s he came to me, did I tell you that? I was practicing, and I felt something funny in the room. My senses were prickling. I knew he was there. I got scared and put the instrument away. Maybe I shouldn't have told other people – they were nervous around me for some time after that! But he never came again.”

I think that passage has several important aspects. Firstly the spiritual nature of African music generally, though this is being threatened by commercialisation. All African musicians see music as a deeply spiritual activity and experience. And secondly the aspect of respect for the forefathers. For Mankunku Coltrane was an ancestor, a forefather, and was therefore in a position to guide Mankunku, and also was deserving of the deepest respect As Mankunku said in the same interview, acknowledging Coltrane's position as spiritual guide, “Even today, when I want to play, I take him (Trane) and I put him inside of me.”
My earliest recollection of Mankunku is in the late '60s in Cape Town, when the Cape Town Art Centre, at which I was studying painting part time, had a regular Sunday evening jazz gig. My then girl-friend and I used to go every Sunday to listen to the great jazz being played there, and Mankunku, in his trademark cloth cap, was a regular. He was backed by other great musicians like Midge Pike on bass and Monty Weber on drums.

Mankunku at the Cape Town Art Centre.

 Photo by Tony McGregor

The 1970s were hard times for jazz musicians in South Africa, what with music styles changing and the heavy hand of apartheid hanging over all. The music scene was not conducive to musicians who were serious about their art, especially black jazz musicians. Mankunku, like the others, had it tough in those years. “If you had just got through the day and nothing too terrible had happened, that was the time to joke, to celebrate, and that was what the music was for...But we never stopped playing. Never! Never went far away from the music. We'd be at home. Some work, practising, listening. It's just that we weren't seen.”
The next time I saw Mankunku was a gig at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg in the 1980s. That was when I heard him play "Yakhal' inKomo", and it nearly brought the house down with its energy and emotional power. Hearing that song live was just incredible – no recording I have heard, not even Mankunku's own, has managed to capture the raw power of that song adequately. The recording is just a pale reflection.

Mankunku at the Greenmarket Square gig. Photo by Tony McGregor

Mankunku recorded outside of South Africa for the first time in 1986, an album called Crossroads, after the informal settlement outside Cape Town. This album was made in London with a number of exiled South African musicians in the studio, like the late multi-instrumentalist Bheki Mseleku, percussionist Russell Herman, guitarist Lucky Ranku and trumpeter Claude Deppa.
I saw him again in 1987 when he played with Chris McGregor in the Carling Circle of Jazz concert on Greenmarket Square in Cape Town.
An album made with old South African jazz stalwart Tete Mbambisa was laid down in 1997 and 1998 called Molo Africa. One of the tracks is entitled “A Song For Bra Des Tutu” which, of course I love!
I never saw Mankunku again. So I was greatly saddened when I got the phone call from my musician friend Ernest Mothle this morning telling me that “Winston has left us.”
In isiXhosa we say, when someone has left us, “Hamba Kahle (Go well)” and so that is my wish for Mankunku - “Hamba kahle, mfo' wethu (my brother)”, your bellowing horn will be sorely missed back home.

Copyright Notice

The text and all images on this page, unless otherwise indicated, are by Tony McGregor who hereby asserts his copyright on the material. Should you wish to use any of the text or images feel free to do so with proper attribution and, if possible, a link back to this page. Thank you.
© Tony McGregor 2009

A fellow-musician reminisces about Mankunku

Today I had a meeting with my friend, bass player Ernest Mothle, who came to my home for one of our regular talk sessions. I am getting him to talk about his life in music, as he is one of a disappearing group of South African jazz musicians born during, or around, the years of World War Two, with the hope of later publishing the story of his life in some form or other.

Obviously with the death of Mankunku still in our minds, the talk turned to Ernest's meeting with, and learning from, the great tenorman. During our meeting last week Ernest had spoken a bit about Mankunku, but now he wanted to tell the story in more depth, to indicate more fully his sense of indebtedness to Mankunku.

The following is more or less how the conversation went.

“I was playing with a band called the Big 5, with Early Mabuza on drums, Pat Matshikiza on piano, and myself on bass, we were asked by Ray Nkwe, who founded the Johannesburg Jazz Appreciation Society, to back Mankunku for a gig because Mankunku had not brought his band up from Cape Town with him. Ray had brought him up for promotional purposes.”

“Early, Pat and myself rehearsed a song that had no title. Johnny Mekoa (a well-known trumpeter and jazz educator in South Africa) was listening to this. He commented that since Mankunku had hit town, all the tenor players around sounded like cows.

“Mankunku then said he would call the tune 'Yakhal' inKomo'. That's how the song was named.

“The band was also rehearsing for a recording we were going to make for Professor Yvonne Huskisson of the SABC. We were asked to do about 10 songs.

“For me, two of these songs stood out – one was the ballad 'It Might As Well Be Spring' (from the 1945 movie State Fair by Rogers and Hammerstein) and the other was 'Yakhal' inKomo'.

The latter was so good that there was huge public demand for it to be recorded.

At around that time Ernest was arrested on charges for which he was later acquitted. But the result of his being in jail for a while was that when the group went to make the recording of 'Yakhal' inKomo' they thought Ernest was still in jail and got Agrippa Magwaza to play instead. That's how Ernest missed being on the biggest-selling jazz album in South Africa.
“Ray Nkwe had access to lots of jazz records (because of his position as head of the Jazz Appreciation Society) and so a group of us used to spend a lot of time at his place listening to his records – that was myself, Mankunku (who was staying with Ray at the time), guitarist Cyril Magubane and drummer Gilbert Matthews. From those hours of listening emerged a band which eventually became Heshoo Beshoo (this band made the great album Armitage Road, now sadly no longer available).

“I learnt a lot from Mankunku – especially involvement, the use of tonic solfa, and concentration.
“Mankunku was totally involved in his music, totally emotionally there. I liked that even though I was in awe of it.

“Tonic solfa helped us to grasp and understand the music very quickly. We would not have managed to learn so much so fast with staff notation.

“Concentration – Mankunku taught us this by getting us to climb a tree with our shoes on, after a few, actually a lot of, brandies! This led to my riding a motorbike for the first time in my life. It happened like this – we were having a lala-vuka (an all-night drinking session) and in the early hours of the morning ran out of booze. One of the people there had a motorbike ad so I said I would go and buy some more liquor if I could use the bike. So the guy showed me the gears and how they worked and I went off on it.

“The others were very worried, especially Mankunku, as we had been drinking for a long time. But I came back safely with the booze. I managed because of the lesson in concentration that Mankunku had given me.”

“He's always stood by me – we've always been there for each other. I remember once a tenor ploayer called Mike Faure came to play at a club where we were playing. People were drawn to him because he was doing a new thing, a sort of Archie Shepp thing. I noticed Mankunku sitting to one side, feeling left out, so I went and spoke to him and told him I'm with him.

“After the recording of 'Yakhl' inKomo' there was a jam session at Early Mabuza's house in Dube, Soweto. There were a lot of musicians, young and old and at that time I was just a face in the crowd because of the euphoria and excitement around 'Yakhal' inKomo'. I'll never forget Mankunku chose my favourite song on the programme, the ballad 'It Might as well be Spring' and came and asked to take the bass. I was shy and only reluctantly took the bass. We did the song and there was that emotional thing happening again and I could see him crying.

“After the song ended he asked a question to the people in the room: 'Why don't we always play like this?'

“I was a little confused at first but then I realised he was talking about getting emotionally involved when playing – giving it all.

“This is my form of dedication and I want to thank him for his contribution to my career.

“Go well, my dear friend.”

Yakhal' inKomo - the cry of cattle at the slaughter house

Yakhal’ inKomo – a classic South African jazz album

"I once saw Mankunku Ngozi blowing his saxophone. Yakhal' inkomo. His face was inflated like a balloon, it was wet with sweat, his eyes huge and red. He grew tall, shrank, coiled into himself, uncoiled and the cry came out of his horn.

"That is the meaning of Yakhal' inkomo." - Mongane Wally Serote: from the introduction to his collection of poetry entitled Yakhal' inKomo, published by Renoster Books in 1972.

From the first deep, broad notes of Agrippa Magwaza's bass one knows that this is a special album. The title track, Yakhal' inKomo, starts with Magwaza and pianist Lionel Pillay laying down a funky groove with a two-note bass ostinato until the soulful tenor of Winston Mankunku Ngozi comes in about four and a half bars later to lay down the main theme.

This theme came to be one of the most instantly recognisable in all of South African jazz. Fans at jazz gigs unfailingly greet these bars with shouts and cries of recognition. This composition by the man affectionately, and almost universally, known to jazz fans simply as "Mankunku" was taken into the hearts and consciousness of people from its first release in 1968, to the extent that it sold around 50 000 copies in its first two years. This is an incredible figure in South African jazz recording history, and made it the biggest jazz album ever released here, a position it still holds against some pretty stiff competition.

When this album was recorded apartheid was exactly 20 years old and many of Mankunku's peers had gone into exile and those who stayed had to endure what jazz writer Gwen Ansell, in Soweto Blues, called "symbolic annihilation" which "became part of the hegemonic staging and broadcasting of jazz," because "the white authorities found it unacceptable that black musicians should be acknowledged as capable of playing such 'sophisticated' music."

Ansell goes to relate how "Playing behind a screen at Cape Town City Hall while a white musician mimed his notes, reedman Winston Mankunku Ngozi was billed as Winston Mann."

Poet John Hendrickse, who knew a thing or two about jazz and South Africa, must have had this in mind in his poem “Remember” (in Khoi, 1990):

Where did you steal that culture

Where did you steal that suit

Fear gave him that sinking feeling

He’d been stealing dignity

His fingers minuet the music

Anger rises up inside of him

The warrior walks through the white menace

The music stumbles in staccato phrases

In a 2003 interview with Gwen Ansell, quoted in her book, Mankunku said:

“Yakhal’ inKomo was an odd tune. Things were tough then – but don’t ask me about all of that, I don’t want to discuss it. You had to have a pass; you got thrown out; the police would stop you, you know? I was about 22. I threw my pass away; wouldn’t carry it. We had it tough. I was always being arrested and a lot of my friends and I thought it was so tough for black people and put that into the song. So it was The Bellowing Bull: for the black man’s pain. And a lot of people would come up to me and say quietly: “Don’t worry bra’. We understand what you are playing about.”

An interesting story of the composition of Yakhal’ inKomo comes from Lars Rasmussen’s great book Jazz People of Cape Town (The Booktrader, 2003) in an interview Rasmussen recorded with pianist Roger Koza, who recalled:

“...I started the whole theme, with chords and all that, and Winston came in, he was a professional, and started building it up, and we used to call it another name...”

Koza continued: “So Winston came back from Jo’burg with this tune and I said, Hey, this is our tune! Listen to this tune! It was no more called Khale, it’s called Yakhal’ inKomo. I said, Who called it Yakhal’ inKomo? And he said, No, it was Pat Matshikiza.”

This story of tunes being swapped between musicians is a common theme in South African jazz. It seems to be part of the struggle musicians have to survive and goes along with the recurring themes of unscrupulous promoters and exploitative recording companies. In the twilight zone that jazz had to occupy during the apartheid era this is not surprising. As Mankunku said, things were tough for black musicians in South Africa.

Whatever the truth of the birth of this iconic jazz piece, it struck chords deep in the psyche of black South Africans at a time when the pain of apartheid was searing. As Serote wrote in another place about Mankunku: “He just went deep, right down to the floor of despair, and reached the rim of fear and hatred. He just spread and spread out and out in meditation, with his horn, Mankunku, Ngozi, that guy from the shores of South Africa, and he said: “That was it.” For that is what he was doing with his horn, Yakhal’ inKomo...” (Quoted in Michael Titlestad’s Making the Changes, Unisa Press, 2004).

In his introduction to his collection of poems called Yakhal’ inKomo from which I quoted at the beginning of this piece Serote also quotes artist Dumile Feni as an explanation of the title:

“Dumile, the sculptor, told me that once in the country he saw a cow being killed. In the kraal cattle were looking on. They were crying for their like, dying at the hands of human beings. Yakhal’ inkomo. Dumile held the left side of his chest and said that is where the cry of the cattle hit him...Yakhal’ inkomo. The cattle raged and fought, they became a terror to themselves; the twisted poles of the kraal rattled and shook. The cattle saw blood flow into the ground.”

It is not too difficult to see the historical significance of these words in the midst of apartheid South Africa.

Writing about the representation of jazz in South Africa and the charcoal drawing by Dumile Feni called Musicianaire Titlstad writes: “... the saxophone has the capacity, as an instrument of witness, to give voice to the irruptive sorrow of oppression...”

The rest of the album is taken up with Mankunku’s Dedication (to Daddy Trane and Brother Silver), Silver’s Doodlin’ and Coltrane’s Bessie’s Blues, Dedication at more than 10 minutes the longest track of the four.

As Rob Allingham wrote in the sleeve notes to the 1996 re-issue of Yakhal’ inKomo (issued with the five tracks of another album called Spring, recorded within four months of Yakhal’) Mankunku’s recordings “beautifully melded a distinctly South African style of jazz with what was then the cutting edge of the contemporary jazz scene in the US.”

Allingham told me in an email response to my questions about this album, Yakhal’ inKomo has been “...more or less continuously in print ever since it was first released”, testimony to its enduring popularity and status among aficionados both in South Africa and beyond.

This is an album of beautiful music that still stirs emotional responses by its expression of human pain and endurance, remembrance and invocation – Yakhal inKomo!

Pretoria

22 July 2008

 Mankunku on stage at Greenmarket Square, Cape Town, October 1987. Photo Tony McGregor