Kwa Tebugo - jazz coming home

"...when Louis slams home a backbeat, everybody jumps."
This article was originally published in the South African jazz journal TwoTone in January 1993.

After more than 30 years, a South African musician who has achieved great acclaim in Britain and Europe is coming back to get the land of his birth jumping with the power of his backbeat.

Louis Tebugo Moholo is coming back with his band Viva La Black, giving South African music lovers the opportunity to hear a sound not heard here since the departure of Chris McGregor's Blue Notes in 1964. More than a generation of South Africans will be able, to catch up with the history music-lovers in Britain and Europe have known for many years - how a small group of highly-talented South Africans shook up jazz in Europe and were important firgures in the early development of what has come to be known as "World Music".

The name of Louis Tebugo Moholo will always be inextricably linked with those of the late Dudu Pukwana, Mongezi Feza, Johnny Mbizo Dyani, Nikele Moyake and Chris McGregor - the Blue Notes.

The Blue Notes landed in Europe after leaving South Africa in 1964 to play at the Antibes Jazz Festival. They immediately set about shaking up the music scene with their unique South African sounds - and Moholo's authoritative backbeat was a distinctive part of those sounds.

The Blue Notes stayed together for a long time: "We'll keep the group for as long as we live," Moholo said in the late '70s. Now he is the last of the Blue Notes - the other five have all died, victims in various ways of the problems associated with being musicians in exile, cut off from their essential roots.

He's coming home with a band that echoes the sound and feeling of the Blue Notes - but re-workede and recast in a highly individual 1990s mould.

Of the eight members of the band, five including Moholo, are South Africans. All five have been in exile for many years and have created formidable reputations for themselves as powerful, innovative musicians. Moholo himself has worked with musicians as diverse as Ornette Coleman and Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor and Tristan Honsiger. In Straight No Chaser magazine, critic Jez Hensinger described him as "one of the world's greatest free drummers, period."

Cape Town-born trumpeter Claude Deppa began his career as a drummer in his father's brass band, moved into Caribbean sounds in the UK and was the artistic director at the inception of ground-breaking British band the Jazz Warriors.

The Caribbean has also influenced the musical development of Durban-born sax and accordian player Sean Bergin, a part of the Dutch free improvisation scene since the mid-seventies and ontime sideman in a Surinamese funk band.

Percussionist Thebe Lipere has worked on every music scene from improv to African dance bands, and buiolt up a collection of percussion instruments from every corner of the African continent and beyond. By contrast, pianist Pule Pheto found his way into free jazz after a formal musical training at Goldsmith's College, London. He still sings with the Goldsmith's Sinfonia.

British-born tenorist Tobias Delius has worked in Germany, Mexico and Amsterdam, while the last of the reedmen, Jason Yarde is one of Britain's new generation of young jazz lions. A graduate of the Jazz Warriors, he has been a student of Steve Wilson and Joe Lovano in the USA, and worked with a range of artists including Mervyn Africa.

Italian bassist Roberto Bellatella almost qualifies as an honourary South Africa. As well as working around the European free scene, he has also collaborated with Dudu Pukwana's Zila and Julian Bahula's Jazz Africa, as well as Viva La Black.

Those who haven't heard the music before will be struck by its freshness, those who remember it will mingle nostalgia with, yes, freshness again, because Moholo's band has taken a whole lot of new things on board too. One reviewer described their most recent album as "exp[losive, confrontational, often beautiful."

Its a sad commentary on our recent history that musicians have to come back to South Africa from abroad before South Africans get the opportunity to hear a vital part of their musical heritage - but the occasion should be one for celebration, not recrimination, that the music has, at last, come home.

Viva La Black will be paying tribute to the Blue Notes by playing many songs closely associated with them. They will base the workshops they plan to run countrywide around the Blue Notes song book.

Songs like Ithi Gqi, Radebe, Magwaza, Eyomzi, B My Dear, We Nduna, Sonia, You Think You Know Me (recently revived by Ezra Ngcukana) - the list could go on and on. Each song provides rich workshop material because of the intense individual vision of its composer, and the paradoxically tight, co-operative improvisational source the band made of it. Although the Blue Notes came together only infrequently in recent years, their spiritual closeness kept them functioning as a unit. In the midst of their wildest free improvisation, they were intuitively connected. "The Blue Notes was the fountain," said Moholo, "the Blue Notes was a school." Free yet together was the spirit of the Blue Notes; free yet together is the spirit Viva La Black will bring us.

In the words of Richard Williams, "What the (Blue Notes) had, individually and collectively, was a complete understanding of the vocabulary of jazz and an utterly uninhibited attitude to the way they expressed it. They sounded as if they'd been speaking the language since birth."

Chris - the Brother I Loved

"With his imagination and his fingers, Chris McGregor created a rich legacy of music, infused with the rhythms and harmonies of Africa. Tony McGregor remembers his brother, the jazz giant who died in 1990." This article was first published in the South African jazz journal TwoTone in March 1992.

From a young boy running over the rolling hills of the Transkei (now the Eastern part of the Eastern Cape Province), quickly picking up the rhythm and melody happening all around him, to the owner of a peaceful farm in a beautiful valley in the South West of France - this is the story of the brother I loved.

In between lay the years of study, the years of listening and learning, which took him from the lecture halls of the College of Music in Cape Town to the shebeens and beer halls of Langa, Nyanga, Soweto and countless places between. The on to the jazz clubs, cafes and eventually the concert halls of Europe.

And always litening, picking up the rhythm, the melody, the harmony of whatever was happening around him.

One of my favourite memories of Chris is of the time I arrived at the Moulin de Madone (his farm in France) on my first visit to Europe in 1979. I was suffering from deep culture shock, not to mention the effects of a gruelling three-week tour of Germany and Switzerland with a party of journalists from South Africa. I had left the party the day before in Geneva and had flown to Paris, then taken the train first to Bordeau and then Tonneins. There I found a taxi driver who agreed to take me to the Moulin. I had no idea where it was. I was exhausted and felt lost.


After a drive of about 40 minutes through rolling green hill, not unlike those of the Transkei, we arrived at a rambling, rather ramshackly building. "Le Moulin," the driver annoiunced tersely and I got out of the cart just as Chris came to greet me, arms outstretched, long grey hair and beard flwoing, and that deep, loving voice, "Hey, Anthony!"

We spent some time talking and, getting my things sorted out, walking around the farm. Maxine, Chris' wonderful wife, was out driving with her sister who was also visiting, so Chris and I had some hours on our own.

At suppertime Chris asked what I fancied for the evening meal. "How about omelettes aux herbes sauvage?" he asked.

As we walked together Chris picked leaves from a variety of wild plants next to the road or in the fields.

Back in the kitchen - an amazing room with onions and garlic hanging next to windows garlanded with spiders' webs, posters on the walls and a grand piano in the corner - eggs were broken into a large pan and mixed with the leaves he had picked.

We ate the best omelettes I have ever tasted with thick chunks of bread - a far cry from the super-refined, homogenised food I had been eating for three weeks.

For me this episode epitomises some of Chris' most wonderful qualities - his connectedness to the environment around him and his ability to create a tasty meal from what was at hand - be it a meal for the palate or a meal for the ears. He took what he found and then transformed it with his imagination and skilled, strong fingers.

His imagination and fingers created a rich legacy of music which has been an inspiration to many musicians and a source of joy and sometimes wonder to many thousands of music lovers in Africa and Europe.

Chris' roots, through all the years in Europe, remained firmly in Africa. Through all his music the complexc rhythms and harmonies of Africa, both rural and urban, pulsate and shimmer like a heat haze over the veld, weaving patterns of light and shade like the blades of grass blown by the wind - now in unison, now in contrary mjotion, but never still, alweays full of energy and life.

I think it is no accident that he always seemed most at home musically with a rhythm section with similar African roots. During his last, most creative years he was urged on by the dynamism of drummer Gilbert Matthews and bassist Ernest Shololo Mothle. During the early Blue Note years, the time of often desperate struggle, it was Louis Tebogo Moholo on drums and Johnny Mbizo Dyani on bass who provided solid support and a foundation for the sometimes wild flights of creation. Louis and Johnny also formed the core of the first Brotherhood of Breath big band - as Gilbert and Ernest did in the last, great incarnation of the band.

We are fortunate that much of Chris' music still exists on record. From the three exciting tracks on the 1962 Moroka-Jabavu Jazz Festival ablum to the 1989 Brotherhood of Breath concert with Archie Shepp in France, Chris' genius as arranger. leader and pianist can still be heard, and, within the limitations of recording technology, experienced.

After the 1963 Moroka-Jabavu festival Chris put together a big band, his first, for a three-week period, with sponsorship from the Festival sponsors. This band made a recording - Jazz: The African Sound - which was remarkable, not only for the quality of the arrangements, the exciting musicians featured and the great compositions played, but also for the recording quality.

Featured on the album were established greats like Kippie Morolong Moeketsi and then up-and-coming young musos like Barney Rachabane, Bra Duds Pukwana, and the 17-year-old trumpet wizard Mongezi Feza - who blew them all away!

The album showcased Chris' arrangemnts of two songs by Dollar Brand (Abdullah Ibrahim), two by Kippie and two of his own compositions.

This gem of an album has been unavailable for many years, but is soon to be re-released by Gallo Music Publishers.

In 1964 Chris left for Europe with the Blue Notes, a band made up of people he enjoyed playing with, many of whom had been on the big band album of the previous year.

The group consisted of Dudu Pukwana on alto, Nikele Moyake on tenor, Mongezi Feza on trumpet, Mbizo Dyani on bass, Louis Moholo on drums, and Chris on piano. Ronnie beer, another tenor player, joined the group in 1965.

In 1968 Chris' first album recorded outside South Africa was released on the Polydor label. It was called Very Urgent and featured the same musicians - with the exception of Nikele Moyake who had died tragically.

On this album the Blue Notes showed their mastery of the freer form of jazz then in vogue in Britain and Europe, as well as their deep African roots.

The song Don't Stir the Beehive harks back powerfully to a Transkei evening with herders whistling and calling to each other, snatches of song and the random rhythm of insects in the thorn trees. Listening to this track I can almost smell the cooking fires and see the sun setting behind the hills in a dusty purploe and orange haze. I certainly feel the longing for home that pervades the track.

In all the recordings Chris made - whether with the Blue Notes, the Brotherhood of Breath, or with other musicians such as District Six (Brian Abraham's wonderful group) and Courtney Pine - this rootedness in Afrioca is apparent.

But more than the great musician, I miss the great person, a giant both physically and intellectually. I wish that his many recordings (at the time of writing this was about 14) were more readily available to his brothers and sisters back home. But even more I wish he could have experienced the amazing flowering of music, the music to which he devoted his life - both here, in this country he loved so dearly, and internationally.

It seems so much like a vindication of all he strove for.

Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath - Spiritual Brotherhood

This is the second part of the Brotherhood of Breath story and was published in the South African jazz journal TwoTone in October 1992. The first part was was called Prophets Without Honour, which was published in the same journal in September 1992.

Brotherhood of Breath's 1971 album was followed by a second RCA release the following year, Brotherhood.

In 1974 came a live album recorded at the jazz festival in Willisau, Switzerland. This featured an impressive number by famous Nigerian percussionist Tungi Oyelana called, appropriately enough, Tungi's Song, featuring a breathtaking solo from Mongezi Feza (trumpet).

Chris had met Tungi during a six-week visit to Nigeria in 1969, while he was writing the score for a movie version of Wole Soyinka's play, Kongi's Harvest. Sadly, the movie was never released and the recorded score is still gathering dust in a tape vault somewhere. Any offers for local release from a record company - I'm sure it would be a commercially viable project?

Another live album was recorded at Toulouse in France in 1977. It contained only three tracks - but what great tracks they are: Chris' own Sunrise on the Sun, Mongezi's lovely Sonia and Dudu Pukwana's Kwhalo.

On this date the band featured two South African basses - Mbizo Dyani and Harry Miller. In the liner notes Keith Beal wrote that the South Africans in the band "...will tell you that all music is a religious experience." That was certainly true of the Brotherhood in all its incarnations: the music exhuded a spiritual quality which reflected the vision of all its members.

Another highly-charged album was Yes Please, recorded at the time of the 1981 Angouleme Jazz Festival - not a live album but one which shows a 17-member line-up in great form.

For me, one number which seems to epitomise the spiritual quality Beal refers to is Uqonda from this Angouleme album. Hearing Shololo Mothle lay down the theme with support from Peter Segona on trumpet and Bruce Grant's flute obligato is an emotionally involving excperience.

In 1988 Virgin released possibly the greatest Brotherhood album, Country Cooking, which has been available in South Africa for some time, but only in limited quantities.

In 1989 the band toured Europe with US reedman Archie Shepp. One of the concerts was released on CD in France - the last Brotherhood album with Chris at the piano. On this CD they paly typical Brotherhood numbers like Country Cooking and Sweet as Honey, as well as two Shepp numbers, Steam and Bessie Smith's Blues, the latter featuring some great blues shouting by Shepp himself.

Brotherhood's story is a great chapter in then history of South African music. Sadly, its one little known to most South African music lovers. There is talk of some members of the band visiting the country later in the year. Maybe that will provide the opportunity for jazz fans to read at least a little of this lost chapter.

A short discography of the Brotherhood of Breath

Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath RCA Neon 1971

Brotherhood RCA Victor 1972

Live at Willisau Ogun 1974

Live at Toulouse: Procession Ogun 1978

Yes Please In and Out 1981

Country Cooking Virgin 1988

Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath with Archie Shepp 52 Rue Est 1989

Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath

This article was originally published in the South African jazz journal TwoTone in October 1992. The editor introduced the piece with this superscript header: "In the first of a two-part series, Tony McGregor uses the re-release of a little-known classic as an opportunity to review the recording career of the Blue Notes and Brotherhood of Breath and argue that tragically, they remain in South Africa Prophets Without Honour."

For nearly thirty years, only a few diehard fans knew the album existed.

Now Gallo/Teal has re-released Jazz: The African Sound, a gem of an album by Chris McGregor and the Castle Lager Big Band. It was recorded in 1963, a year before Chris and five fellow-musicians left South Africa, never to record or play together here again.

The re-release is a poignant reminder of how much we South Africans have paid, in cultural terms at least, for apartheid.

Even most serious South African jazz fundis (fundi - a South African word meaning one who knows, an expert) are unaware that a group of six South African musicians turned the European music scene upside down from the mid-Sixties on.

Never mind the British Musicians' Union and Equity bans - apartheid drove these musicians out of South Africa and kept their immeasurable contribution to South African music a secret from most Sou8th Africans.

Perhaps the opening up of South Africa and the slow and painful demise of apartheid will at least bring appreciation for the legacy of those musicians who, long before Paul Simon and the rest, saw the huge potential of our indigenous musical heritage. Dud Pukwana, Mongezi Feza, Nikele Moyake, Johnny Mbizo Dyani, Louis Tebogo Moholo and Chris McGregor, calling themselves "The Blue Notes", left South Africa in 1964 after a nation-wide tour, to play at the Antibes-Juan-les-Pins Jazz Festival on France's famed Cote d'Azur, where they attracted very favourable critical notice. They went on to busk around Europe for a year before settling in Britain where they promptly began blowing up quite a storm.

In the words of British jazz critic and author Valerie Wilmer, they "literally upturned the London jazz scene, helping create an exciting climate in which other young players could develop their own ideas about musical freedom."

Wilmer described the change brought about by The Blue Notes like this: "There were times when rooms more accustomed to the anodyne four-in-a-bar jocularity of an Acker Bilk took on the gritty character of a Soweto shebeen..."

Some of this character and energy can be heard on the relatively few recordings made by the band - what a shock numbers like Don't Stir the Beehive, We Nduna and others must have been to most British jazz fans.

From the energetic core of The Blue Notes McGregor developed his next big band, called the Brotherhood of Breath, reflecting in the name something of Chris's deeply-felt belief about music transcending and breaking down what he termed "outdated concepts of national identity and the nation state."

The band went through a number of incarnations from its formation until Chris' death at 53 in May 1990. Over the years it became what Dutch jazz writer Frits Lagerwerff called "the best free jazz big band in the world."

It was formed early in 1967 and had its first public outing at the famed Ronnie Scott's "Old Place" in March of that year. Clive Crickmer of Melody Maker was moved to write of its debut: "This must be it. The most urgent, and explosive, and powerfully swinging new big band to have appeared in years."

In the Daily Telegraph (yes, indeed!) Peter Clayton wrote about the "kwela jauntiness...plus a sort of ceremonial abandon which seems to inform some of Dudu Pakewana's (sic) more inspired flights."

In an interview at the time (with Chris Bird of Melody Maker) Chris said: "I'm not interested in that highly organised, compositional aspect of big band music, I go for moods, for feelings and textures and most of my things are very sketchy. That way the guys themselves can contribute more to what's going on."

In another interview at that time he said: "There are so many ways of making music and they all interest me."

Tragically, to my knowledge at least, no recordings of this band exist. At the time journalist Miles Kington wrote that soem of Chris' South African recordings (Jazz: The African Sound, in fact) were available to Decca, "but there seems little hope of their becoming more than merely available."

Kington prophetically continued: "This is a great shame because by the time these bands (he was writing about the Brotherhood as well as Graham Collier's septet and the Mike Westbrook Band) are well-known enough to force companies to record them, whole stages of their development will have vanished forever."

The band did not last long and there was a three-year gap before it was reborn, but what a rebirth it was.

"If anyone tells you that happiness has gone out of jazz, tell them about the Brotherhood of Breath," wrote Valerie Wilmer in Melody Maker. "If anyone says that the New Music is committed to overtones of anger and hatred, tell them about Chris McGregor's Big Band. If anyone asks you where have all the firemen gone, tell them about Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath.

"And say it loud, for if you don't, the band will stow away their charts and fold up their music stands for another three years," she continued. "They keep on trying to tell us that jazz is dead and rock's the thing, but not so, folks. With men like McGregor's around, jazz will never die."

The band, in its second incarnation, got its recording break in 1971 when RCA chose it to launch their new Neon label and over the following years in its various versions, made some outstanding recordings. Limited availability in South Africa has meant that these are all too little-known.

A total of seven Brotherhood albums were released: two on the RCA label, two on Ogun, and one on Virgin. The other two were released on French labels only.

This period also saw many concert, festival and club appearances and many ups and downs for Chris and the other Blue Notes pioneers.

The Brotherhood fluctuated in size from around ten to around 17, and Chris went out of his way to find musicians from many different backgrounds to bring their own particular gifts and insights to the music.

But it was always the South African core of musicians who contributed theior energy and the creative edge to the band. The music, however "far out" it became, however "free", was always grounded in African harmonies and rhythms.

The South Africans in the early Brotherhood included Mongezi Feza (trumpet), Dudu Pukwana and Ronnie Beer (saxes), Harry Miller (bss) and Louis Moholo (drums). By the early Eighties the new generation of South African members were Brian Abrahams and Gilbert Matthews (drums), Ernest Shololo Mothle (bass) and Peter Segona (trumpet).

By the late Eighties the band included, besides the now "older" generation represented by Mothle and Matthews, "younger" musicians like Claude Deppa (trumpet), Frank Williams and Robert Juritz (saxes).

Singers like Peggy Phango, Phinise Saule, Sonti Mndebele and Aura Lewis sang with the Brotherhood from time to time. Cosmo Pieterse recited his poems to their backing.

The longest serving member of the Brotherhood is trumpeter Harry Beckett, the only person besides Chris to have been in all the band's various incarnations.

Two women have played with the band - Annie Whitehead on trombone and Caroline Collins on cello. And if the cello is an unusual instrument in a big band, Brotherhood has also featured a bassoon (Robert Juritz) and has had from time to time two basses and two drummers together in its line-up (coincidentally one each French and South African - namely Didier Levallet and Ernest Mothle on basses and Jean-Claude Montredon and Brian Abrahams on drums).

Beside compositions by Chris and other Blue Notes' members the band has played songs by Makaya Davashe (Lakutshon' iLanga), Mike Osborne (Think of Something), trombone player Radu Malfatti (the exciting Yes Please), Ernest Mothle (Thunder in the Mountain) and George Lee (Big G). And the surviving original members of the Blue Notes were meanwhile all actively pursuing their own individual musical careers.

Mbizo Dyani, Dudu Pukwana and Louis Moholo were playing with some international jazz greats like Steve Lacy, Don Cherry and John Tchicai as well as then also expatriot fellow-South Africans Abdullah Ibrahim, Hugh Masekela and others.

Some of these recordings have been seen on local record shop shelves, but they have certainly not been given the exposure they deserved. Ironically, musicians who were sought out by European and US musicians, had less success in their own country than these very same international performers.
It is still easier to get albums by Max Roach than Louis Moholo, David Murray than Dudu Pukwana and John Patitucci than Mbizo Dyani, despite the international acclaim for these South Africans' talent.

Jazz Epistle Verse 1

On 22 January 1960 six of the top jazz musicians in South Africa went into the Gallo Studio in Johannesburg and recorded one of the truly great South African jazz albums: Jazz Epistle Verse 1. It was an unprecendented album in South African jazz history.



The group consisted of Abdullah Ibrahim (then still known as Dollar Brand) on piano, Hugh Masekela on trumpet, Jonas Gwangwa on trombone, Johnny Gertze on bass, Makaya Ntshoko on drums and the "sad man of jazz" Kippie "Morolong" Moeketsi on alto and clarinet. The band was called the Jazz Epistles and became very well-known to jazz lovers in South Africa.



This group had grown out of the band put together by visiting United States jazz educator John Mehegan which recorded in 1959 two albums called Jazz in Africa Volumes 1 and 2. This band had as rhythm section Claude Shange on bass and Gene Latimore on drums with Mehegan on piano. These recordings are described by Gwen Ansell in her book Soweto Blues (Continuum, 2004) as "... music at the cusp, with elements of the old swing training and discipline, plus the risk-taking and speed of bebop and a conscious African awareness, on original and standard compositions."

When Mehegan left to return to the States Moeketsi in particular wanted a group to play more adventurous and challenging material and so he, Masekela and Gwangwa looked around for a rhythm section and found Ibrahim, Gertze and Ntshoko who were prepared to go further in exploring new ideas in music. This group came to have an extensive following after playing at various venues around the country. And where the Jazz In Africa group had played mostly standards with a sprinkling of South African material, the Jazz Epistles included no standards on their album. All the songs were composed by members of the band, four by Moeketsi, three by Ibrahim and one by Masekela.

This studio date was two months almost to the day before the Sharpeville massacre which was to turn South African politics into an international affair with the outside world denouncing the killings which shocked many into an awareness for the first time of the viciousness of the South African fascist regime.

"On March 21, 1960 the Sharpeville massacre occurred when the South African police opened fire on black civilians protesting the abhorred Pass Law, which restricted them to certain areas and forced them to carry passes at all times. 69 people were killed and 178 wounded by police during the violence.
"Sharpeville Day has been commemorated since then on 21 March, and since 1994 has been the official Human Rights Day public holiday." (From the Wikipedia article on Sharpeville.)

The album opens with the Masekela composition Dollar's Moods, dedicated to the group's pianist. This is an upbeat and humorous number with some lighthearted but interesting soloing from Moeketsi, Masekela and Gwangwa before the dedicatee weighs in with a chorus or two of his own, with some typical Ibrahim chords. Gertze also has his say before the group brings it all to an energetic close.

The next number Blues for Hughie, written by Moeketsi, is a 12-bar blues excursion which, after some rather funky ensemble work in the introduction gets down and dirty with some fine soloing from Masekela, including some interesting tonguing, before Moeketsi gets in on the act with a fine bebop take on the melody. Gwangwa makes it all rather sombre with his solo sounding like a melodious fog-horn. Ibrahim's solo takes it all back to the beginning again, with the ensemble closing off the track.

Uku-Jonga Phambili (looking ahead) is a number written by Ibrahim a few years before and is a great showcase for his playing, which he does alone on this track with only the rhythm section in attendance. Gertze contributes a beautiful, soulful solo.

Next up is Moeketsi's hauntingly beautiful balad I Remember Billy, which, according to the liner notes, was originally titled Free and Easy. Moeketsi plays this number on clarinet, as he does on the later Jazz: The African Sound album which I will be writing about soon.

The next selection is Ibrahim's rather jaunty Vary-Oo-Vum, which according to the liner notes is dedicated to "Cape Town author Howard Lawrence." According to the wonderful book Cape Town Jazz 1959 – 1963, featuring the photographs of Hardy Stockmann, “Howard was a close friend of Dollar Brand.” (Copenhagen: The Booktrader, 2001). At the time of this recording Lawrence was a journalist on the Post newspaper and indeed was known as “Mr Post.” I have looked for other references to Lawrence and the only one I have so far found is in anti-apartheid and former Robben Island prisoner Ahmed Kathrada's autobiography Memoirs. Kathrada calls Lawrence a photographer working for the Cape Times newspaper. Lawrence died in September 1981.



Carol's Drive, the next song, is by Moeketsi with a wonderful alto, bass and drums section which Moeketsi himself apparently loved. The authorship of this tune is somewhat in doubt as Gwangwa lays claim to it in his comments quoted by Gwen Ansell in her book Soweto Blues. Gwangwa described the influence the Epistles had on him as a musician and how he started to compose: “I was in Cape Town and we were rehearsing there with the Epistles and the guys left me alone - I don't know why, but I woke up and they weren't there! I sat at the piano that whole day, messing around until I came up with this tune ... 'Carol's Drive'. Then my composing thing was stating out ... and a style was being formulated, of course, only I was not aware of this.”

A piano solo piece by Ibrahim follows called Gafsa. According to the CD inlay notes: “It tells of a man who was madly in love with a wonderful woman. She dies, but her vision comes to him as he walks through the streets of Cape Town on a misty night.” Beautiful, typically Ibrahim, evocative and lyrical, befitting the subject as described.

The final track is a theme by Moeketsi and is “about” the treatment of the band by a white club owner. The incident is described in Peter Esterhuysen's book Kippie Moeketsi Sad Man of Jazz (Viva Books, 1995): “One evening the Jazz Espistles were playing in a Johannesburg nightclub. When they took a break the owner led them to the kitchen. He gave the musicians a meal. Then he went back inside his club. While the Epistles were eating, Kippie became very cross. He said, 'By right, you know Dollar, this is all nonsense – this idea of us being taken into the kitchen when there's a break. Are we 'kitchen boys'? Aren't we here to entertain the people?' 'Ja ou pellie,' Dollar answered, 'ons kom nou en dan by die kombuis ... the scullery department.' Kippie started to make up a new song right there in the kitchen. He called his new song 'Scullery Department.'”



Each member of the band had an interesting life story.

Probably least known of this group outside of his home country, the “sad Man”, Kippie Morolong Moeketsi was often referred to as the Charlie Parker of South Africa. He was a man of immense talent and imagination, whose sensitivity led him down a self-destructive path of alcohol and neglect in the face of repression and exploitation. Moeketsi, after the Epistles, joined the pit band of the show King Kong and was with the show for its London season. While there he had many confrontations with the management of the show and this led to more erratic behaviour and his eventual stay in a mental hospital where he was subjected to Electro-Convulsive Therapy and then sent home.


Makaya Ntshoko had trained as a boxer who had ambitions of becoming a champion. Or maybe his family held those ambitions. The other musicians had to beg his family to let him play, especially when Ibrahim and Gertze wanted to take him to Europe with them. He was born in Cape Town where he had connections with many of the great names of the jazz scene there: Morris Goldberg, “Cups” Nkanuka, Banzi Bangani and Phakamile “Phaks” Joyo and others.

Johnny Gertze was also from Cape Town where he had worked with Ibrahim. He was born in 1937 and besides the bass played trumpet, clarinet and guitar. After some years in exile with the Dollar Brand Trio he returned to South Africa in 1968 and died of a brain tumour in 1983.

Abdullah Ibrahim, then known as Dollar Brand, was born in 1934. He started playing professionally at 15 and in 1954 was recorded with the Tuxedo Slickers, a 15-piece big band. In 1958 he backed the Manhattan Brothers, a very popular singing group, on their tour of the Eastern Cape.

Jonas Mosa Gwangwa was, along with Hugh Masekela, an alumnus of the famous Trevor Huddlestone Jazz Band. This band was made possible by the well-known Anglican cleric who lived in Sophiatown in the 1940s until he was expelled by the Nationalist Party government in the mid-1950s. Huddlestone vigorously opposed the removal of Sophiatown residents in terms of the infamous Group Areas Act and so earned the wrath of the Government of the day, but the enduring love and appreciation of the people of Sophiatown. Huddlestone's book Nought for Your Comfort details his struggle to prevent the removal of Sophiatown.



Hugh Masekela grew up in Witbank to the east of Johannesburg. In his autobiography Still Grazing Masekela tells of hearing, at the age of four, the famous Jazz Manics, one of the top jazz groups in South Africa at the time, and, as he puts it, “... music first captured my soul, forced me to recognize its power of possession. It hasn't let go yet.” Moeketsi was a member of the Maniacs at that time and this was the first time Masekela heard him play. When he went to St Peter's School in Rosettenville, Johannesburg in the early 1950s he and some of the other boys became interested in music. Fr Huddlestone scrounged instruments for them and they began to practice seriously. Masekela says: “Huddlestone enjoyed our enthusiasm.”

So the Epistles were 50% Cape Town musicians and 50% Johannesburg musicians, but 100% into a new style of jazz for South Africa – harder-edged, more bop-oriented than the more usual swing-oriented groups that were popular at the time. This was a historic album indeed.

All the above musicians' photos above were taken by Hardy Stockmann and published in the book Cape Town Jazz 1959 - 1963.

Classic South African jazz albums

Over the next few weeks I will be writing about some classic albums of South African jazz from the 50s, 60s and 70s. I have chosen ten albums to start with. Of these five are albums recorded and released in South Africa and five were recorded and released during the time of exile of the artists involved.

I will also, in the main, write about albums that are available on CD, though there might be some exceptions. The reason for this is that CDs are simply more accessible these days than vinyl. I don't even have a turntable anymore, though that might change sometime!

The albums I will be writing about are:

1. The South African releases:

• Dollar Brand Plays Sphere Jazz
• The Jazz Epistles Verse 1
• The Castle Lager Big Band: Jazz: The African Sound
• Winston Mankunku Ngozi: Yakhal' inKomo
• Dollar Brand: Mannenberg.

2. The exile releases:

• Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand): Water from an Ancient Well
• The Chris McGregor Group: Very Urgent
• Abdullah Ibrahim with Gato Barbieri: Hamba Khale (sic - should read Kahle, I think)
• The Brotherhood of Breath: Live in Willisau
• Hugh Masekela: Home is Where the Music Is.

Each of the albums listed above is in my view a classic. Classic in the sense that each one epitomises the vitality of the music and the explorative searchings of the artists involved. I will also with each posting try to indicate where these albums are available. Many are available through Amazon.com but others might not be so easily obtainable.

Some of the albums, like Mannenberg and Yakhal inKomo have achieved almost cultic status among jazz fans in South Africa. Others, like Very Urgent and Live at Willisau are almost unknown in the community of South African jazz fanatics.

There are of course many more albums both local to South Africa and released abroad that are great and I will I hope get to writing about them also in time. The ten that I have selected to write about now are a personal selection and in no way indicate a negative view of any albums so far not listed - watch this space, as they say!

Jazz in South Africa has been called "the peoples' music" though I'm not sure that this still applies. Like jazz elsewhere it has become something of a specialist interest, though it is still written about quite frequently. Indeed two recently published books bring out some of the magic and excitement of South African jazz.



Firstly the brilliant Soweto Blues by Gwen Ansell deserves an honoured place on any jazz lover's bookshelf. It was published in 2004 by Continuum, New York. It is a distillation of the best parts of an eight-part radio series called Ubuyile/Jazz Coming Home which was broadcast on the network of community radios in South Africa.

Secondly the photographer Jurgen Schadeberg, who wonderfully captured the images of the heyday of South African jazz in the 50s and 60s, has produced a book entitled Jazz, Blues and Swing, with great photographs and written contributions by Don Albert, Gwen Ansell, Darius Brubeck and Hotep Idris Galeta. Its a wonderful book published by David Philip in 2007. This book also is highly deserving of a place on your bookshelf.

The place of jazz in South African culture and society was acknowledged recently by President Thabo Mbeki who honoured the exiled Blue Notes with one of South Africa's highest official honours, the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver, for "excellent achievement in the genre of jazz music, contributing to the development of music in the South African townships and defying the apartheid laws by forming a multi racial group."

So, official recognition at the highest level for an art form that not too many years ago was regarded officially as beyond the pale.

This is the jazz that I will celebrate on this blog over the next little while. This is the music that has inspired, comforted and uplifted people for many decades, through the unbelievably dark days of the apartheid era and into the new dawn of freedom for this beautiful country. This music was the sound track of the struggle and is now the emblem of freedom. Its practitioners suffered for the music and many have died along the way. I celebrate their memories also.

Address to Arts Alive 2007 opening event.

Address to Arts Alive 2007 opening event.

The story of jazz in South Africa is one of ups and downs, highs, lows, laughter and tragedy. In fact it is much like the lives most of us live day-to-day.

Out of this mess, every now and then, something very special arises. What we celebrate this evening is one of these special things.

In 1964 seven brave people started out on an amazing journey of faith, hope and daring. Six young men and a young woman left the known of home and went off to the unknown in Europe. Of these six young men only one is still alive today: Louis Moholo.

Thankfully the woman is still alive and is indeed with us this evening – Maxine McGregor. We are honoured to have you with us this evening, Maxine.

Of the five who are no longer with us we celebrate in a special way the music of Chris McGregor. And its good to celebrate it because it is very special music which has not been heard much back here in South Africa.

But at the same time we should not forget, Chris would want us to remember, that what he did he did because of the support and friendship of the others. So tonight we should not forget Nikele Moyake, Mongezi Feza, Johnny Mbizo Dyani, and of course, Dudu Pukwana, whose relationship with Chris was not unlike that between Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges.

While it could be argued that other South African musicians took South African music to the world, Chris and the Blue Notes took South Africa to the world in their music.

Their music was an expression of the pain and the joy of South Africa, not a direct political statement but a lived experience which touched the hearts and minds, not to mention the dancing feet, of those who heard them in those cooler northern climates.

The music we celebrate tonight is particularly that of the Brotherhood of Breath. Chris had long had a desire to express himself through the medium of a big band and the Brotherhood became, as some have remarked, Chris’s true instrument.

We do well to remember, though, that the Brotherhood was rooted in the South African experience as mediated through the Blue Notes.

The Brotherhood always had at its rhythmic heart South African rhythm men: Louis Moholo and Gilbert Matthews on drums; Johnny Dyani, Harry Miller and of course Ernest Mothle on bass. We are very grateful that Bra Ernest is still very vibrantly with us and has so ably directed the music for this celebration tonight. Bra Ernest – we salute you! (Photo above is of the master bassist).

This evening is in a way completing a circle. Chris started his big band career here with the Castle Lager Big Band back in 1963. And what a blast that was!

So tonight we are bringing the music home again. And like many homecomings this one is bitter-sweet. The music is home again but our brave compatriots are not. So we rejoice in the music and the spirit of love and joy it brings. And we say thanks to those brave spirits who created it. They live on in this music.

And of course for me personally, if I might be allowed to bring in a more personal note here, I am here to remember and honour my brother. Chris was a great big brother, big in more ways than one, and I still miss him.

Finally – thanks to all of you for being here to honour Chris, Dudu, Johnny, Mongezi and Nikele, and the spirit of the Brotherhood of Breath.

Tony McGregor

Johannesburg

31 August 2007.