Recursos para inmigrantes en Castilla-La Mancha | eactivo | Spaans vir immigrante
In hierdie gemeenskap kan ons nie veel direkte inligting vind, maar hier is 'n hulp:
1. In Albacete aanbod: Castiliaans klasse.
2. In Siguenza aanbod Castiliaans klasse.
As TENE vrae kan raadpleeg ACCEM.
Ons kon nie meer inligting vir ander onderwerpe vind, maar as jy weet enige ander vereniging, por gunste, Skryf vir ons!
En dit is die kaart: 1P.J. Walters39.1-3.6-2.00.5 -1.5 -2.5 2Scott Diamond131.0-13.2 -7.2 -4.4 3Kevin Correia185.1-10.94.2-0.2 0.2-5.3 -2.4 4Vance Worley48.2-7.82.4-2.4 -6.9-2.3 -2.8 5Pedro Hernandez51.1-4.5-5.7-1.0 -1.0-2.1 -4.4 6Kyle Gibson51.01.1-6.30.0 -2.8-0.9 -3.0 7Samuel Deduno108.04.4 -0.5 -0.8 -4.4 8Liam Hendriks36.20.1-7.9 -0.5-0.6 -1.7 9Mike Pelfrey152.2-5.8 -5.3 -4.0-0.3-0.5 10Cole DeVries7.0-1.2-0.5 -2.00.0 0.3 11Andrew Albers60.03.80.20.2 -1.5-2.61.2 1.0 Custom Leaderboards kagablog » music and exile symposium
Filed under: 2010 - the exhibition of vandalizim,music,music and exile symposium — ABRAXAS @ 10:47 am
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KWANELE SOSIBO on Bheki Mseleku
Filed under: Jonathan Eato,music,music and exile symposium — ABRAXAS @ 1:08 pm
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Filed under: music,music and exile symposium,stephanus muller — ABRAXAS @ 4:33 pm
Om Die Stem as ’n kollektiewe herinnering te ondersoek, steun op hierdie metaforiese verstaan van musiek in die algemeen, en van ’n spesifieke werk in die besonder. Dit is nie ’n ondersoek wat veel te doen het met die geskiedenis van die lied nie. C.J. Langenhoven se vers is slegs die fondament van hierdie plek, M.L. de Villiers se melodie slegs die buitemure daarvan en Hubert du Plessis se amptelike orkestrasie die binneversiering. Die vraag na geheue en herinneringe en van hoe hierdie dinge hierdie teks betrek het, is by uitstek nie ’n vraag na die skryf van geskiedenis nie. Die verbeelding wat op soek is na geheue moet meer poëties te werk gaan.
Figuur 1: David Goldblatt-foto met die beskrywing “Die Heldeakker, The Heroes’ Acre: cemetery for White members of the security forces killed in ‘The Total Onslaught’ Ventersdorp, Transvaal, 1 November 1986”.
Die slotfrase van Die Stem word heel letterlik ‘triomferend’ (die karakteraanduiding in die musiek) gespan as sin-gewende banier oor hierdie afgekampte ruimte. Dit skenk definisie aan die ruimte van die militêre begraafplaas. Hoor die kyker dit? Die twee gestorwenes in die begraafplaas word opgedra deur die kontoer van die melodie: B-mol-A-G-B-mol-D-E-mol. Die gepunteerde ritmiese aanhef van die frase, gerig deur die tussendominante harmonie besweer twyfel, stu vorentoe, mik na die oplossing aan die einde van die frase. Die einde is gerusstellend as einde. Dit maak sin. Dit besorg ons tuis.
… telkens word die belhamel van die betogers gearresteer, gemartel en doodgemaak: dan ontstaan nuwe protes, en daaruit kom nuwe martelaars. So hou dit aan tot daar ’n doodse stilte toesak waaruit Die Stem begin groei terwyl ’n groepie Volkspelers in spierwit maskers oor die lyke van die martelaars begin dans.
Dit is ook hierdie ‘Stem’ wat aan die einde van J.M. Coetzee se Age of iron die nagmerrie-visie van die hel van ’n klankbaan voorsien. “I am afraid”, sê die sterwende mevrou Curran, “of going to hell and having to listen to Die stem (sic) for all eternity”. Die Stem wat die kis van Milla Redelinghuys haar graf in begelei aan die einde van Marlene van Niekerk se Agaat, ’n ander teneur. Wanneer die plaas Grootmoedersdrift in besit geneem word deur die bruin vrou, Agaat, gevorm deur die wit vrou wat haar liefgehad en verwerp het, is dit Die Stem wat op ’n dubbelsinnige manier verandering en voortsetting artikuleer:
Gaat wat die mense by die graf die derde versie van Die Stem laat sing: … by die klink van huw’liksklokkies, by die kluitklap op die kis … Thys se liggaamstaal! Die skouers militaristies agtertoe, oë strak na bo, ou Beatrice starend na die einder. Die werkers, mans en vrouens, het dit gesing soos ’n hallelujalied, oë omgedop. Woordvas tot en met. Trust Agaat. Sy sal nie sommer gou die nuwe lied invoer nie.
Maar hoe het historiese resepsie gelei tot ’n stelselmatig-groeiende fascistiese timbre wat uitvoerings en resepsies van Die Stem in die tagtigerjare gekenmerk het en ook in bogenoemde voorbeelde uit die letterkunde opgeroep word? Daar was immers ’n tyd toe Die Stem ’n bevrydingslied was vir Afrikaners, ’n alternatiewe teks vir kollektiewe musikale mobilisasie as God Save The Queen. Hierdie essay wil die enkele aangehaalde voorbeelde van fiksienarratief-gemedieërde herinneringe aan Die Stem probeer koppel aan historiese proses, soos dit verteenwoordig word in argiefdokumente van die FAK uit die vyftigerjare.
Ek is van geaardheid en opvoeding uiters konserwatief, veral wat die heilige dinge van ons volk betref. En Die Stem het een daarvan geword. Ek het dit selfs bitter betreur dat Die Stem aan die end van die voetbalwedstryde in Engeland gesing en gespeel is … Daar is vir my net een leidraad vir die sing: besit die vergadering poids et majesté in die Calvynse kriterium? Dan kan Die Stem gesing word!
De Villiers se antwoord kan slegs ten dele aangehaal word. In die res van die brief spreek hy hom ook uit teen die sing van Die Stem by politieke vergaderings aangesien hy as lid van die Nasionale Party dit sal “betreur indien die Sappe Die Stem as visitekaartjie van die [Nasionale] Party aanskou”. Die verskriklikste vergryp teen Die Stem bestempel hy as “’n juffroutjie [wat] aan die klavier gaan sit en haar eie, apokriewe harmonie (?) by die wysie maak”.
… ’n verhewe uiting van die standhoudende aspirasies wat diep in die volksiel leef. Dit dui op die verlange dat volk en Staat sal voortbestaan en dit dien as ’n middel om die volk saam te snoer tot ’n hegte eenheid en hom also te sterk om die verhewe ideale wat vir volk en staat gekoester word, te verwesenlik. Dit styg uit bo die tydelike en dui op ewige en onverganklike waardes.
Die Stem is ’n metafisiese ruimte van aspirasie en idealisme. Daar kan slegs reg daaraan geskied word deur dit uit te voer by “byeenkomste waar die oogmerk van die byeenkoms nie tot homself beperk is nie maar die tendens inhou om waardes te wek wat ook vir die toekoms betekenis sal hê”, aldus Pelzer. Hy vrees ook dat Die Stem misbruik kan word, te wete deur Die Stem aan dieselfde “laagvloerse behandeling van die Engelse volkslied” te onderwerp. Die transendentale is nie ’n Engelse ruimte nie.
d) dat by die afsluiting van byeenkomste ander liedere bv. Afrikaners Landgenote gesing word.
Dit is belangrik om te registreer wat hier besig was om te gebeur: die kontrole, die anti-Britse sentiment, die van-mense-verwyderde estetika van ’n museumstuk wat gepropageer is. Die gevoel dat Die Stem nie net ’n lied was nie, maar ’n mistieke sleutel tot die Afrikanervolk se selfstandigheid. Dit is dus nie verrassend nie, dat wanneer Die Stem in 1957 as enigste amptelike Volkslied van die Republiek aanvaar word, geen oortreffende trap genoegsaam is om die vreugde in die geledere van die lied se kurators in die FAK te beskryf nie. ’n Telegram van gelukwense word aan die eersteminister gestuur:
Van: Sekretaris FAK
Hoogste sielsverrukking! Een van die belangrikste bakens op ons weg na volwaardige nasieskap. Die Stem het die Afrikanerpartituur van nasieskap geword. Drie dae na die versending van hierdie telegram, skryf die voorsitter van die FAK, prof. H.B. Thom, ’n brief van gelukwensing aan J.G. Strydom waarin hy die belang van Die Stem as volg verwoord:
U het die Afrikanerdom, en inderdaad die ganse Suid-Afrika, ’n belangrik stap vorentoe gevoer op die pad van volle, ongekwalifiseerde geestelike selfstandigheid, wat so ’n onmisbare voor-vereiste vir ware ekonomiese en staatkundige selfstandigheid uitmaak. Ek voel oortuig daarvan dat die Geskiedenis nog eendag die enorme betekenis van u leiding in verband met ons volkslied op treffende wyse en in sy volle omvang sal laat sien.
Volle, ongekwalifiseerde geestelike selfstandigheid. Dit is een formulering van wat die betekenis van hierdie lied was in die ore van die Afrikaners van daardie tyd. Maar selfs nadat Die Stem as enigste amptelike Volkslied van die Republiek aanvaar is, het die beheersug daaroor in die geledere van Afrikanerleiers nie verdwyn nie. Geestelike selfstandigheid is, helaas, nie ’n waarborg vir goeie smaak nie. En nie net moes die melodie volksbesit wees en bly nie, maar ook daardie verkankerende korrupsie waarteen doktor Con de Villiers gewaarsku het, afwykende harmonie, moes as volksvreemd uit Die Stem verwyder word. ’n FAK Musiekkommissie-notule van 12 Maart 1960 dokumenteer die volgende bespreking:
Dr. G.G. Cillíe wys daarop dat prof. Hartman (sic) die verwerking van Gideon Fagan so in die superlatief aanprys en dié van ds. M.L. de Villiers so radikaal verdoem, dat ons beslis kan sê dat dit nie ’n objektiewe en wetenskaplike mening is nie en dat dit daarom geheel-en-al verwerp kan word.
Op 14 Maart 1960 word ’n brief namens die FAK se Musiekkommissie aan prof. H.B. Thom geskryf, vermoedelik deur die FAK se sekretaris. In hierdie brief word ’n ‘dringende saak’ geopper, naamlik die beplande plaatopname van Die Stem deur die SAUK. Die bron van ongelukkigheid is die Fagan ‘vierstemmige verwerking’ wat deur prof. Friedrich Hartmann aangeprys is:
Die Fagan-verwerking se tempo van 60 kwartnote per minuut is onaanvaarbaar stadig en is blykbaar ’n nabootsing van God Save the Queen se tempo.
Die Stem word verengels deurdat dit meer soos ’n himne en minder soos ’n mars gespeel word. Maar die antagonisme teenoor alles wat Engels is, van die karakter van die Engelse nasionale lied tot die voortdurende beklemtoning van die negatiewe kommentaar as ‘in Engels’ maak dit duidelik dat die motiewe hier sterk geanker is in nasionalistiese diskoerse. Dat daar ’n onderliggende wantroue is teenoor ‘die beste tegniese toonsettings’ is duidelik, en dat hierdie wantroue geleë kan wees in die (onbewuste) bevestiging van die Afrikaanse woord as potensieel kwesbaar vir ‘volksvreemde’ harmonie, is ’n ryk gedagte. Die kleinlike Afrikanerpolitiek wat agter hierdie polemiek woed word puntsgewys deur die briefskrywer aan Thom verduidelik. Kortliks is dit ’n “set” deur die “volkvyande van die Afrikaner” om Gideon Fagan as hoofdirigent van die SAUK aangestel te kry, eerder as die voorsitter van die Musiekkommissie van die FAK, Anton Hartman. Of Friedrich Hartmann se opinie musikaal verantwoord is, is nie ter sake nie:
Die opinies wat deur hulle ingewin is, is slegs van mense wat hoegenaamd nie in ons Afrikaanse volkslewe staan nie. As volksliedere en harmoniesering [sic] daarvan, suiwer op musikale perfektheid beoordeel moet word, sou Die Stem in die eerste plek nooit aanvaar gewees het nie.
’n Brief met ’n appèl dat die M.L. de Villiers-toonsetting deur die regering as amptelike toonsetting erken word, is vervolgens ook deur die FAK aan dr. H.F. Verwoerd gestuur.
SOMEBODY BLEW UP SOUTH AFRICA – Aryan Kaganof on DUDU PUKWANA
Filed under: kaganof,music,music and exile symposium — ABRAXAS @ 4:57 pm
aryan kaganof backstage at the bimhuis with dudu pukwana
first published in afrikadaa #10
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Honoring Makaya Ntshoko: Jam Session, 16.12.2014, the bird’s eye jazz club
Filed under: music,music and exile symposium — ABRAXAS @ 9:23 pm
To the music related media, organisations, promoters and researchers in South Africa and beyond
The bird’s eye jazz club at Basel, Switzerland in cooperation with the Centre for African Studies at the University of Basel celebrates the legendary drummer of Jazz Epistles’ fame. The jam session will be streamed live via www.birdseye.ch.
Makaya Ntshoko is rated among the most eminent jazz artists. The drummer made jazz history with the legendary Dollar Brand Trio (Abdullah Ibrahim) and as house drummer at the Montmartre in Copenhagen in the late 1960s, the Domizil in Munich (mid-1970s) and has virtually performed and recorded with all major jazz musicians from the USA. For well over four decades Makaya Ntshoko has been living in Basel and has thus not only marked, influenced and promoted the international but also the Basel jazz scene in a major way. On 29 October 2014 he turned 75. On December 16 the bird’s eye (where Makaya recorded his live CD Happy House) offers him the opportunity to meet and jam with fellow musicians and friends.
Date and time: 16.12.2014, 20h30
Venue: the bird’s eye jazz club, Kohlenberg 20, 4051 Basel
No reservation – door opens at 20h00 – come early!
Live stream: tune in the session on www.birdseye.ch
(source: Classic Feel Magazine, June 2007)
Video: With Dexter Gordon live at Montmartre 1969
The bird’s eye jazz club in cooperation with the Centre for African Studies at the University of Basel has been running for the past decade a highly successful series of South African Jazz. This has resulted in the publication of the sampler Live at the bird’s eye jazz club Vol. 13 South Africa (LABE13, 2013). Regularly South African artists are featured as artists in residence. In the context of the 2006 residency of Feya Faku the Swiss South African Jazz Quintet (with Makaya Nthsoko on drums) was founded, which then toured South Africa in 2007 including a residency of Makaya Ntshoko at the District Six Museum in Cape Town.
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taylor ho bynum on mongezi feza
Filed under: music,music and exile symposium — ABRAXAS @ 6:52 am
first published here: http://jazztimes.com/articles/143381-taylor-ho-bynum-on-mongezi-feza-and-barbara-donald
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Filed under: Lizabé Lambrechts,music,music and exile symposium,stephanus muller — ABRAXAS @ 4:19 pm
more info here: http://www.sun.ac.za/english/faculty/arts/music-konservatorium/Pages/DOMUS.aspx
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ian kerkhof on music and censorship in south africa (originally published in rixaka)
Filed under: ian kerkhof,music,music and exile symposium,politics — ABRAXAS @ 7:14 am
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shamin chibba on chris mcgregor
Filed under: music,music and exile symposium — ABRAXAS @ 1:07 pm
keep reading this article here: http://www.mediaclubsouthafrica.com/culture/3869-mcgregor-s-music-captures-the-african-village
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born for greatness – biography of frank leepa
Filed under: music,music and exile symposium — ABRAXAS @ 12:40 am
sankomota’s singer and guitarist’s life is celebrated in this biography by mpho a leepa.
published by geko publishing
front cover photograph by aryan kaganof
johnny mbizo dyani interviewed by aryan kaganof, amsterdam 23 december 1985
Filed under: hearing landscape critically,music,music and exile symposium,politics — ABRAXAS @ 11:43 pm
I was 19 years old in 1983 when I left South Africa to avoid being conscripted into the apartheid army.
By the end of 1985 I had a collection of about 40 albums which featured Johnny as a side man, as well as all of his albums as a leader. It was then that I happened to meet Lefifi Tladi, a South African in exile who had left the country after the student uprisings of 1976. Lefifi shared my passion for Johnny’s soulful music and gave me Mbizo’s phone number. “Call him”, Lefifi said, “he’d appreciate that.”
Johnny was living in Malmo, Sweden, at the time, and his subtly melodic, occasionally rasping voice reminded me of his bass playing. We talked for hours on the phone and he ended by saying “Do something man, don’t just tell me you like my music, do something!”
Johnny was accompanied on the tour by a Ghanaian hi-life band, kumbi saleh, the Dutch reggae outfit Revelation Time, and British dub poet Benjamin Zephaniah. The tour was huge success, all the concerts well sold out and a lot of money was raised. Johnny and I decided to put together a group consisting of South African exiles as well as the cream of players still in the country. From the offices of the Dutch Anti-Apartheid Movement (where I was working at the time) we phoned Barney Rachabane and Winston Mankunku Ngozi. They were both excited by the prospect of coming out to Europe to tour with Johnny’s exile band. Tete Mbambisa would be the piano player. Then Johnny suddenly died onstage in 1987. His liver gave way.
For 24 years I carried four cassettes around with me which contained an interview that I did with Mbizo on 23 December 1985 in the offices of the Dutch Anti-Apartheid Movement on the Lauriergracht in Amsterdam. My only question to Johnny was “tell me what you think is important.” This is the transcription of that interview. the transcript was edited by ntone edjabe of chimurenga magazine.
JOHNNY DYANI INTERVIEW 22-23 DECEMBER 1985
Johnny Dyani: This police officer asked, ‘So, are these your boys?’ Chris [McGregor] went pale. I mean when this guy asked everybody jumped and Chris’ eyes widened. And it went quiet, man. And Chris was left breathing, huh huhm huh huhm. So the guy asked again, ‘Are these your boys?’ Chris wanted to get out of the car, you know, to answer this outside. So Nick [Moyake] said, ‘Tell him! Tell him Chris!’ and Nick was laughing: ‘Go ahead Chris, tell him! Tell him who we are. Tell him!’ And Chris was pale. ‘Are these your boys?’ We were just looking at Chris and Nick was enjoying it now. Nick said, ‘Come on Chris tell him. Let’s hear gents, what he’s gonna say, come on my brother…’ And this cop is like, what’s going on here? ‘Yeah come on Chris, tell him who we are.’ And Chris nodded silently, without saying any words. So Nick said, ‘Are you saying we are your boys?’ And Nick’s at the back, ’cos this guy is standing at the front door, at the window. So Nick pushes his head out the rear window, ‘It’s not true! I’m not nobody’s boy!’
blue notes: l-r chris mcgregor, dudu pukwana, louis moholo, johnny dyani, mongezi feza
This guy turns around and says, ‘What you say?’ This police officer. And so as he walks around the kombi to open the door and Chris says, ‘Oh my God Nick, why do you?!’ So Nick is arguing with Chris and we’re all saying to Nick, ‘No man, why you say that for? Why do you say that?’ Then Dudu [Pukwana] asks, ‘What side are you on Chris? Whose side are you on?’ Then Maxine [McGregor] was waking up, she says, ‘You guys, you must realise we going to go to Europe and your passports will be taken and this and this…’ We are saying, ‘Who cares!?’ They have this thing that your passport… like little boys, you know, your candy will be taken off; you won’t go and play again, some shit like this you know? And we knew this as we were going to France, everything was becoming impossible. They were watching us like hell, man. They were watching us, ’cos we were touring at that time. So this officer, what did he say? This guy said ‘Kaffir’. So Nick said, ‘Don’t ever call me that, Sir.’ And we had this thing of… Dennis [Mphale] came up with this thing… again Dennis was the influence, ’cos he called a white guy ‘Sir Baas Mister’ you know? Just by hearing it it’s like clowning, silly, naughty. So Nick says, ‘Sir Baas Mister’. The cop was amazed man, he couldn’t believe it. He says, ‘You go at once before I do anything.’ Nick came out of the kombi and said, ‘So what can you do? I’m famous than you. I’m going to France.’ That guy was wild, he took his hat (screams), you know, he was all like this, on his gun. You know it was so…dramatic! Because Nick was so cool he kept on saying, ‘You cannot do me nothing, I’m famous than you, I’m going to France. Me.’ So Dudu told him, ‘Let’s go man, leave this guy. Don’t waste your time, leave this guy man.’ So Nick gets back in the car and phew! We drive.
Now we knew when we doing a tour, the money from the group and everything, we supposed to be the band. Now the other thing, every time we are travelling with this bus, with this kombi, we’ll give somebody a lift. Now who is this somebody, we were giving all kinds of lifts to the black guys, right, I mean we knew, but Chris didn’t know, Maxine didn’t know. That the guys were into (laughs), well, the guys who were in the underground would say, ‘I want to go to PE, can you arrange a lift?’ So if you travelled with the Blue Notes everybody is safe ’cos the Blue Notes is famous right? So you can get a lift with the Blue Notes. This car was going from East London, Cape Town, we touring! These guys would say, ‘Oh yeah this is a friend of mine, Johnny, he’s playing with the Blue Notes.’ Some guy would say to me, ‘Listen my boy you gonna give someone a lift, meeting so and so a time, going to PE. Talk to Chris.’ No we don’t have to talk to Chris. It’s our band. So we just say, ‘Chris, we have to pick up so and so at so and so place.’ Maxine would say, ‘No the car is full, the car is this…’ kind of. We say, ‘No there’s a lot of space!’ We knew that some of the guys were either into that or that or that… and now we were very aware of being watched. Because when we came to East London it was strange, really strange because there, in Fifth Street, this Donald Card cop…It was about eleven o’clock at night, so everybody lived at my home, there a boarding house right? The musicians stayed there and when we arrived Chris go sleep in town, a hotel some kind of. So at night a police car comes, a detective, black policeman, at my house. Two o’clock at night, we sitting there talking, my brothers and my sisters, other guys are sleeping. So they say, ‘We came to collect your son’, they said to my mother. So my mother’s panicking. So my brother said, ‘Nah Johnny, what is it?’ So this black policeman say, ‘Tula wena!’ you know, so my brother says, ‘Hey guys shuddup man’ to this guy wearing big boots, ‘just shuddup!’ So this private, a white guy, says, ‘No, he’ll be back, we just want to talk to him in Fifth Street.’ So my mother said, ‘I’m going with him.’ ‘No, he’ll be back.’ So my brother said, ‘Then I’m going with him.’ So they said no, my mother will go. So he said no, he’ll go. Two o’clock at night. So I get in the car with my mother and as we go out this policeman says to my brother, ‘You cheeky you!’ Then I thought, ‘Oh shit!’ So anyway, we went to Fifth Street. Donald Card was there, he was in pyjamas you know. So we came in his office, he’s sitting there, ‘Yes?’ So my mother said, ‘What is this?’ Now my mother had a very good thing to humiliate them, she would say, ‘What is it my son?’ The guy just shouts, ‘I’m not your son! Don’t ever say that!’ My mother shook her head and said, ‘You know I’ve never seen such a thing. You grown up now, I know your father than you. Your father was well-behaved, and you are not behaved. If your father knew…’ And this guy just went, you know, he just went, phew! He told the officer, ‘It’s all right.’ These tactics of getting to these guys man, you know. Boers at home. This is why people like Winnie Mandela, all these people, they are not scared of the Boers. ’Cos you have to just …find a way, without pulling a fight, you just… give them these shocks because they are shocked man. If you say, ‘Look man, don’t touch me like this…’ They will accept it, but they will say, ‘Go, go…’
JD: All kind of funny things were happening. ‘Tell us what you gonna do?’ some black guy was saying or black sister, whatever. So this old man said, ‘Tell me, what are you gonna do, are you involved you know, in the struggle? What are your plans? Are you coming back?’ That’s what he said, ‘Are you coming back home?’ I said, ‘I don’t know how France is. Maybe I’ll come back, I don’t know. If it’s nice…’ So he looked at me, I said, ‘I have to go now anyway…’ I went with my mother. Now they wanted us to take a taxi, so my mother said, ‘You drove us here, you drive us back!’ This is the night before this office thing, they didn’t want to drive us back man. So she made this man drive us back. As we packing in East London, to leave the town… that’s another thing, we meeting musicians now. Some of the musicians say… then I realize there’s a whole political thing going on because some of the PAC said, ‘You guys are selling out, you play with a white musician, you are this, you are that…’ Then I thought, damn this thing is huge. So we went to Dorkay. Now at Dorkay they have photographs of King Kong, and making a party there.
So I see Bra’ Kippie [Moeketsi], yeah, we are in Hillbrow, they made a party there these guys. It got packed, all kinds of people, packed. And we knew, Bra’ Kippie says, ‘Hey, me I’m not going to that party because you guys are gonna be tapped, they did that to us at King Kong.’ So we said no, we went to this party. We heard pum phrum, a gun, at night, Kippie comes in the door, brrhhgh! Oh boy! Everybody’s standing at this party you know, ‘Kippie? Kippie? Kippie what’s happening?’ Kippie runs in the toilet. ’Cos we heard these shots, we don’t know where Kippie was, anyway this party… and Mongezi’s reminding this photographer or somebody, he’s telling this guy, ‘You full of shit man! I’m going to Europe me!’ and Mongezi saying, ‘Yeah I’m going to fuck those women. Revenge!’ And Mongezi saying, ‘I want to see where you people come from.’ All these white guys now: ‘Mongezi! Mongezi!’ Some people were slapped, man. ’Cos I remember now, one of these white girls, Jewish girls were so hip, they had money you know, somebody just went, ‘HAAAHHH! Shaddup!’ Black musicians… And she was crying, she cried loud, so much so that the police came. Chris said, ‘We better go because…’ (laughter). So we said, ‘No, we not going because it was not our affair, we don’t know what it was all about.’ So the police came, ‘Yeah what’s going on here? The neighbours are screaming, say there’s black people here, kaffirs. What’s all this?’ So the owner of the party, Peter Olsson, Peter says, ‘Well officer, there’s no black people here you can see. Officer you can come and look for yourselves, there’s no black people here.’ So Kippie’s screaming in the other room, ‘Let me out! You fucken moer let me out! Fucken hoer’s kont, let me out! I’ll beat that bitch!’ So this officer, when he kicks the door, there’s a bottle of brandy, we sitting there drinking the brandy keeping quiet, Kippie screaming, ‘Let me out!’ And Kippie was not even pushing, he was just sitting there and he was shouting, acting it, ‘Let me out I’ll kick this bitch!’ So when the cop comes in we all sitting in a round circle there with a bottle there and glasses. So they saw this, and we all whispering, ‘Hey Bra’ Kippie you know…’ ‘Let me out! Kick this bitch!’ (laughs) All these white guys, they all live there. So the cop came in there, he said, ‘So what are you doing this time of the night here? And sir do you know that you not allowed to have black people at this time of the night here?’ So somebody said, one of the white guys actually, Bob [Tizzard], Bob said, ‘Oh no officer you know these are famous people they are going to France tomorrow, we are making a party. They are very famous these people, it’s very special this.’ So this officer says, ‘I don’t give a damn sir, this is breaking the law.’ All these guys they have this Dennis Mphale attitude, so Bob said, ‘Ah you don’t say!’ ’Cos also this guy, Bob, he always used this lingo: ‘You don’t say, Sir Baas Sir Mister’ So the police’s getting confused now and he’s getting more red and red and red and red and someone says, ‘cool it man, cool it.’ So Bob said, ‘No you don’t understand these are great musicians they are from America. These are no Zulus! These are no kaffirs!’ Somebody in the room says ‘Cool it man! Cool it man!’ So Kippie started slanging, (puts on an accent), ‘Listen here! Listen here! Listen here!!’ So these officers… So Bob says, ‘I told you these are Americans!’ So this guy is trying to figure out, Americans? Black Americans? I guess he’s thinking about the Navy, whatever, whatever it was, you know… ‘If you touch these people you’ll be in trouble officer, you better not touch this matter because this is too complicated.’ And you know this officer asked his friend to leave and it’s not the first time Bob do that because in Cape Town at Room At The Top one time it was so packed man, with different musicians, all kinds, South African musicians in that place, jamming. So these police came, ‘We hear the neighbours are complaining’ because it was UP! You could hear the noise when the windows were open. So people complained that it was all kinds of multi-racial, whatever, so the police came there, came to stop this. Everybody say, ‘Oh no just leave us alone please’, I remember that night everybody just said, ‘Please leave us alone! Just go! Go Go!’ They left man! They left! I swear because I was there sitting by Tete [Mbambisa], sitting by the piano. They said, ‘Please leave us alone, everywhere we go, everywhere on the street you telling people what, just leave us alone, just go!’
No anyway in this party right… what is amazing…see what I’m saying, telling you all these stories, I mean this scene, this generation, we are aware. Of course as I see the elder musicians there, at that time, they were scared to get involved into rebellion, you know to have a nerve to say…
AK: But when they were young were they involved? In the thirties for example?
JD: Yeah they were! Because when King Kong was in South Africa, King Kong had more rebellion than the King Kong that went to London. A lot of people were taken out because they were considered too dangerous or whatever. Now although I didn’t see that kind of scene but I could see from my brother.
JD: Yeah. He played piano and the reason he didn’t perform or go to concerts to play, especially playing in front of white audiences, because I remember he said to me, ‘Yes it’s very nice to see you doing your thing. I won’t do that.’ So I asked why and he said, ‘See I don’t want to entertain white people, I’d rather play here in the neighbourhood.’ Damn! Phew! I looked at this guy and I said, ‘What do you mean? You don’t even want to play in the concert hall here in the location?’ He said, ‘Precisely. From the location concert hall to the town hall I don’t want to be an entertainer, it’s a white thing. I play in the neighbourhood.’ He kept on repeating this, ‘I play in the neighbourhood.’ Which again was this marabi kind of…
blue notes: l-r: nick moyake, chris mcgregor, johnny dyani, louis moholo
jd: I remember when I went in the car to a concert with the Blue Notes, he was in the car, sitting in the back, and Chris was driving. He picked me up at supper and then on to the concert and we was talking, you know, some friends and people going to the concert, ‘Yeah we are proud of you Johnny, we proud of you guys going up.’ So my brother just said, ‘Yeah I’m also proud.’ Then he said to Chris, ‘You have to be careful, don’t mistreat these guys.’ I try to put it as I know him, ’cos he said actually something like, ‘Don’t make-believe as if these guys are heroes.’ That’s what he said, ‘Don’t make believe as if these guys are heroes, you know, it’s all the same, it’s still going on, this is just a make-believe because they are going to Europe and you people are making a fuss that they are doing tours.’ Because Chris said, ‘Isn’t it fantastic that musicians of today can make tours, travel with a bus, they have their own bus, the advertising,’ and I remember my brother said, ‘they advertising Pepsi Cola. So to me it’s a make-believe, I’d rather stay home. But it’s nice anyway because at least these young guys will be breathing some other air.’ But he looked at Chris, he said, ‘I suppose you Mr McGregor, you are a piano player but it’s strange that you never look at my eyes in my house.’ That’s what he said man. ‘Every time you came to my house you never looked at my eyes Mr McGregor.’ So I looked at him you know and he had everybody’s neck stiff man. So he just said to Nick, ‘Nick I trust that you are in this group, why don’t you correct things? Correct things man, don’t let everything just jump.’ And Nick laughed, you know? Now we came to the concert…
IK: What’s the Xhosa word?
JD: Imbambizo amaculi.
jd: And these people had these kinds of ways of saying things, that’s what was strange hanging out with those guys because you could never understand them! Now people like Chris and all these white musicians, we got them because they were hanging out with us only to hear but they never understand these phrases. Even from the simple one of Dennis’ sayings…’cos he used to say to Chris and them, ‘Hey Baas Sir Mister Sir, give me ten rand, Sir Baas.’ So Dennis when he watches the guy getting reddish or kind of upset, he would say, ‘What shall I say then, which one shall I choose?’ The guy would never… (clicks his fingers) These guys were dangerously hip. Now when my brother says these things, you know, and I looked at these things, is why I say I’m fortunate because I grew up… because he used to tell me at home. He’d play me a chord and if I just ask, ‘What chord is this?’ He’d say, ‘It doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter (pops his lips)… You don’t need to know the chord of this. Because if you did know what this chord is, in our point of view, you’d be crazy, but in the white man’s view you’d be a, you know, celebrated.’ So I thought damn man, what’s this guy all about. So in that way, it’s like they say at home, if you want to seek knowledge you go to those guys, they sit in the kraal or whatever and then they be talking and then you ask all these questions, they look at you and say, ‘Are you prepared for this knowledge?’ And you be saying, ‘Ah yes, yeah!’ They say, ‘Are you really prepared, because if you ask you might go crazy, it might not all fit here (points to head) and you go phissh!’ And it’s true because with all that knowledge you gotta be prepared. Your mind, the strength of your mind, your sight, your hearing, your heartbeat, your energy. You have to be prepared to carry all that. If you’re not it doesn’t matter if you know the meaning, just grasp it and listen and when you grow up or when you ready then you can sort it out.
jd: I say this because this guy Mra [‘Christopher Columbus’ Ngcukana], now that’s another old man that was, you know, had funny sayings man. He beat me up one time. He beat me. I was at his house in Cape Town, you know, finished eating and then there was a bass against the wall, I just started playing, bum drum bum drum, and then he said, ‘Stop that! Pum pah pum pum pam!’ Damn! And he was beating me up man! He said, ‘Do you know what you are doing?’ Damn he scared the shit out of me man. He said, ‘Do you know what you playing? Do you know what you doing? Do you know? Do you know?’ So I said, ‘What did I do?!’ He said, ‘You see! You don’t even fucken know what you doing!’ Damn! Those guys they look at a thing, you know, they put it there. And that’s an African way of looking at things see, if somebody says something, they tell you a story, they say… because at home they talk in terms of ‘Over There!’ That’s why when they say, ‘Let’s take a walk’ in the village, for example, like I used to go with my father, he was stationed outside East London right? He would take me to meet the guys in the village, to just fix my head up, my city intellectual whatever hip mind. And this guy would say, ‘Ok, let’s take a walk, let’s go buy something in the village.’ I walk along and say, ‘Where are we going, where is it?’ So everything is in advance, it’s ‘There! Over there!’ So when you looked they never say, ‘Here’, you always have to put it ‘There’. Because as they talked they looked at you. Because Mra beat me, so this trombone player, Willie Neti, that’s another guy from Cape Town who used to play with him, his mother said, ‘Ah Mra, you don’t need to do that to a child. He’s still a child.’ Then when she said that, somehow I was relieved. It finally got clear. Some kind of message. Mrs Neti said, he’s just a child. And yet me, playing with the Blue Notes, I’m supposed to be the bass player!
gwigwi mrwebi – mra
Mbaqanga songs (1967) featuring Gwigwi Mrwebi and Dudu Pukwana on alto saxophones, Ronnie Beer on tenor saxophone, Chris McGregor on piano, Coleridge Goode on double bass, and Laurie Allan on drums
JD: So Nick says, ‘I’ll take you to Bra’ Mackay’ so Nick came in and Mackay stopped working and said, ‘Is it you again?’ So Nick, he has a way of calling him right, ‘Ah Bra’ Mackay, Numzana,’ you know. So he says, ‘I see you Moyake.’ They call each other. So he says, ‘Who is this young guy who has the nerve to come and stand here and stare at me and then he has nothing to say?’ So while he’s talking to Nick he’s winking to me and I wonder what’s going on here. He’s winking, he says, ‘Come here, you are Johnny right? You are this one who just came from East London. You guys don’t have no discipline you guys. You just walk in and yet you don’t have anything to say. You don’t have discipline you guys. Nick discipline this young man.’ So they introduced me to him. Then he talked about my brother.
JD: Yeah. Because my brother actually is like Nick’s age, you know, but since my mother had this boarding house everybody, the King Kongers, African Jazz, they used to tour, they stayed at my house. So he asked how is your mother, how is the old lady, how is your brother? So he turned around and said, ‘I’m afraid you’re getting too ahead of yourself. Your brother is not like you.’ And he turned around and he laughed and he looked on the floor and he looked on me again and he said, ‘Anyway you could never be like your brother but I hope you learn.’ Then he said, ‘Ok Nick I have to work.’ So I left man and as we come out Kippie comes in. So Kippie looks at me. Kippie is older, Mackay’s generation. So Kippie looks at me again and he says to Nick, ‘Nick is welcomed, he’s passed his exams.’ In other words you have to pass your exams with these guys here, right? From drinking point of view, from sitting in the same room, you know, everything. You can wear your tie and suit, they don’t give a fuck. So Kippie’s hugging Nick and he looks at me. All the time he’s hugging Nick he’s looking at me and he just passes. Nothing, no word, cold! So I thought Fuck what’s this man? And then as he holds the door he turns around, he says, ‘You! I want to have a word with you.’ ‘Yeah Bra’ Kippie, yeah.’ As I go to him, as I go to the door he says, ‘Not now. I didn’t mean now. I mean I want to have a word with you, I don’t know where, I don’t know when. Maybe next week, maybe next month, maybe next year, maybe when you come back from Europe. I don’t know.’ I thought What the fuck is this man? And then they had a jam session at Dorkay for us, you know, everybody was jamming just before we were going to Europe. And I was playing and Kippie hadn’t heard me yet, right? So I’m playing and then we finished playing. And Kippie comes to me and says…and this is the best compliment I’ve ever had; he just looked at me, I’m standing there I want to hear, and he looks at me and he ignores me and goes. Then he comes back again and stands and he looks at me and says ‘I love you.’ Phewww!
jd: It’s funny because immediately I felt that from now on, because Kippie is the last one from those days, I said to myself, ‘From now on I’ve got my diploma.’ This is what I’m trying to say: all those guys, Kippie, Nick, you know, Bra’ Mackay… I’ve got my diploma I don’t need to prove anything. Because when I was in Europe Ben Webster was nasty with me. Ben Webster came out drunk, ‘Yeargh bass player is playing wrong, D-major, this this this,’ and I look at this song and I said fuck, what the fuck is this? I was saying to myself now who the fuck is he trying to impress? Because I know man, I knew I did my homework, I knew I had my diploma and I knew I had my everything together before I left South Africa. Because we knew, the Blue Notes, when we left South Africa, we are here to do. Fuck everybody else. And I met Ben Webster later in Copenhagen and I was playing again a month later and he said, ‘Oh I remember you’ and he was sober now, ‘I want you to come to my house.’ And he liked Mongezi. He adopted Mongezi as his son actually. He loved Mongezi. If Mongezi walked in he’d say sit here (slaps his leg), Mongezi would always sit on his lap. Where’s your horn? He’d shout at Mongezi if Mongezi didn’t bring his horn. ‘Don’t come to my session if you don’t have your horn!’ But with me he was kind of… so anyway I saw him right.
Johnny Dyani – bass; Butch Morris – cornet; Doudou Gouirand – alto saxophone; Pierre Dørge – guitar; Makaya Ntshoko – drums – Album:”Grandmother’s Teaching” (1982) – Label: JAM Disques
jd: So I knew, I knew in myself, after all these experiences, that every experience that I had with these kind of people, I would look at it and then, the meaning of it, and then I said to myself, yeah that’s another point. So in Europe, what broke the Blue Notes is that ignorance again, because Chris… the Jewish South Africans in London, they divided the Blue Notes. Again coming with this South African thing that ‘Oh you guys are from home, you know, play-play, living the dream again, play that song from then, or that atmosphere rather,’ so I’m saying this thing is finished man.
IK: The same trio as is on the Live At The Golden Circle album?
JD: Yeah, the same trio, but anyway, when he came in to Ronnie Scott’s to check us out, we knew all these things, these guys are checking us out, in and out. In and out and out and in. And at that time Hugh Masekela came to London, same week, and he came in as the African whatever…so we looked at Hugh, and we were doing something else way revolutionary this side because now we were really taking from Mra’s point of view, the fowl run, because we all said let’s do the fowl run on them…
Johnny M. Dyani – African Bass (1979) Red Record VPA 149 – Johnny M. Dyani – bass, piano, voice; Clifford Jarvis – drums, voice
JD: Free jazz! And we were doing the fowl run, now within that so-called, to them, free jazz. They would say, ‘What is fowl run?’ We said, ‘You’ll find out later.’ So Hugh Masekela was in the club, he said, ‘You guys mustn’t do this man,’ he told us about Coltrane into this… So what Coltrane into this? I mean we knew Coltrane was also and everybody was into different revolutionary time in the sixties right? So Hugh said, ‘You guys will fit in the States, this thing is in the scene,’ and we were not interested to go to the States, we didn’t give a fuck about the States, none of us in the band really gave a fuck about the States. In other words we were prepared, we wanted to start it here because we believed everybody came from here, the whole thing came here, from here in Europe, so if we start here… and again Hugh Masekela came imposing this thing of kwela, mbaqanga on us, ‘You guys you can make money’ and he had a company, so you know, ‘you guys… this mbaqanga thing, jussus!’ We didn’t take notice of that, and anyway, Ornette was in the room. Dudu said, at intermission, ‘There’s Ornette!’ Shouting. And you know Ornette is a shy guy, everybody turned around, the whole room, ‘There’s Ornette! Where’s your horn man? C’mon? Where’s your horn? You are Ornette Coleman aren’t you?’ Damn, Dudu’s running the Cape Town thing… and Ornette was kind of panicking, Dudu: ‘Hey you are Ornette! C’mon, bring your horn, you are Ornette, ain’t you?!’ So we said, ‘Hey Dudu leave this guy, you are embarrassing this guy.’ ‘He’s Ornette!’ And Dudu’s saying it to us in Xhosa,’I’m gonna blow his head off. I’ve been waiting for this guy.’ That’s what he said, ‘I’ve been waiting for you!’ Now Dudu he’s into another level because Dudu now was also from the other generation from Nick, like he was prepared. Now of course Ornette was checking us out, but he was putting us as Africans, it’s-nice-to-see-you-guys kinda, they were doing that. It’s strange because the Europeans would take us for real but the American black musicians would take us, ‘Oh yeah you Africans, how do you play this?’ So Ornette had this attitude. So Dudu got mad, you know, I got mad also and Mongezi got mad. You know, this attitude, but anyway the one that was very hip to us was Roland Kirk. Roland Kirk wanted it all. He said, ‘You guys, invite me to play with this band man.’ And we loved Roland Kirk because Roland Kirk was WOW!
jd: Roland Kirk wanted it as raw as it is. Because him and Dudu, every time he meets Dudu they will go wild man, like phoohh! Roland Kirk would tell Dudu, ‘Do what you have to do in behaviour, and don’t let nobody live your life.’ So that time Archie Shepp came in, now this our generation now, right? The avant-garde guys, but now Archie, politics and all, and we were in London and when they came in London with Jimmy Garrison and all these guys, now they had this white trombone player Roswell Rudd and we all said, almost at the same time, that’s Bob Tizzard there! Because we could recognize everything, everything, it was not new, everything we would just say, oh there’s Bob Tizzard, there’s this, there’s this, there’s Kippie, there’s this, there’s that, ’cos Nick… I remember Nick in Zurich at Dollar’s party. Dollar invited the Miles Davis group rhythm section: Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams, and Wayne Shorter. Nick told Wayne Shorter right in front of us when we were at that party, just pheww! That guy even today when he sees me, when he sees the Blue Notes, I wonder ’cos that guy might hate us or some shit because he cannot stand what Nick told him. Dollar said, ‘This is Nick Moyake.’ Nick holds this guy’s hand man. He holds it, grips it, and says, ‘You ain’t shit. What you play I played it before.’ And he holds his hand; the guy is pulling his hand! We were there in this party in Zurich. Dollar said, ‘How can you do this at my party, why you so rude to my guests?’ So Nick said, ‘He ain’t shit I played this before. He’s coming with an attitude.’ But WE! We were full of shit of man!
ANTIBES JAZZ FESTIVAL, FRANCE, July 1964 – First appearance of the Blue Notes in Europe! Chris McGregor – piano, leader; Dudu Pukwana – alto saxophone; Nick Moyake – tenor saxophone; Mongezi Feza – trumpet; Louis Moholo – drums; Johnny Dyani – bass
JD: NO! NO! We were full of shit after playing, like we go to a guy like Sonny Stitt, he was saying every African playing bongos or some shit, so we tell this guy, ‘Fuck you man!’ At one time we were listening to a concert in Zurich, and Sonny Stitt is smoking a cigarette and Nick was smoking a cigarette and it was going down so Sonny Stitt say, ‘Hey man you don’t need to smoke a cigarette right to the end, don’t embarrass us in front of white people.’ That’s what Sonny Stitt said man, in Zurich, 1964. So Nick said, ‘I’m gonna get this one.’ So Nick turned around and said in Xhosa, ‘Listen to this one now. They think they’ve got bongo-bongos, they think we are those ones.’ And we knew what Nick meant so we were waiting. So Roland Kirk was there too, because they were in a Norman Grant tour, whatever, Newport, so Roland Kirk was in this group that was there, so actually we came to check these guys you know, Miles was playing also. Yeah we were listening to Miles that night, right? And everybody else was there at the backstage, Sonny Stitt, Roland Kirk, everybody, so Dudu and Nick was going to Miles, ‘Let us in man! Let us in! Are you Miles Davis?!’ Miles’s like: ‘What’s this?’ So somebody said, ‘Yes these guys are from Africa, these are Africans.’ So Miles, so all these Americans, Sonny Stitt, Howard Mcghee, were very nasty to us man, even before they even knew what we were doing, when they heard ‘Africans’, these guys were so nasty. And this guy Howard Mcghee didn’t like Miles, for some kind of jealousy or something. Anyway, so Miles said to Dudu, ’cos Miles had whisky in his dressing room, so he calls these guys, you know, Dudu… You see Nick and Dudu going in and out, when Miles finishes a song they follow Miles, they go in the room they be drinking with Miles, talking, so Miles told these guys, Louis and Dudu, ‘Beat him up! This guy is calling you bongo-bongo, beat him up!’ He’s saying about Howard Mcghee, ‘Beat him up. He’s jealous of me anyway, he’s nothing but a nigger!’ We didn’t understand it…so anyway Roland Kirk was on the other side, ‘Man, where are these guys from, South Africa?’ So we came into Roland Kirk’s room also, we were drinking, at that time also, we did… pheww! Backstage there were bottles, pheww! You know? So backstage we were talking this… So Sonny Stitt says this to Nick. Nick just looked at him and said, ‘After all it’s you.’ And he said, ‘What do you mean man? It’s me. I’m Sonny Stitt. It’s me.’ So Nick said, ‘I’d rather talk to Charlie Parker than you.’ (laughter)
JD: Right. When he first met Mongezi… and we liked challenges, I don’t know, Dudu or Louis was teasing Mongezi, saying, ‘Don is here, you in shit now!’ (laughter) You know all these games, all this provocative! See how far you can go. ‘You in shit now Don is here.’ ‘Don is here Mongz, we don’t play trumpet, you the one in trouble…!’ So Mongezi said ‘Find him for me.’ And really, Mongezi made Don put the trumpet down and say, ‘Teach me. You don’t play trumpet, you talk through the trumpet.’ ’Cos when I met Don he said, ‘This guy,’ ’cos he used to play flugelhorn also, ‘this guy don’t play trumpet, he talks! I would like to learn this. I’ve been trying to learn this since I’ve been playing with Ornette and them.’ We see these guys and we were challenging ourselves too, not aggressively like Don, like Mongezi would say, ‘Yeah, Don Cherry fuck him up,’ NO, NO, it was provoking him to get there.
And then I saw Jimmy Garrison, again, those guys, you know, they were pure, sincere. Jimmy Garrison, Roland Kirk, Coltrane, those guys, they got it together, they were aware of their African… ’Cos Jimmy Garrison, when I played after that he said, ‘Ah man I wish I played bass like you.’ Mongezi was standing next to me when Jimmy Garrison was saying this, so Mongezi said when Jimmy left, we were talking nicely, so Mongezi says to me, ‘You know Johnny I always thought you are heavy.’ So I didn’t know how to compliment Mongezi so I said, ’cos I also looked up to him, I said, ‘He talks shit man.’ We talk like that, we don’t give compliments. This group, never. We would never. I don’t care if Dudu played his ass off, we would never individually say, ‘Hey you know…’ but before we go to the concert, we would say to ourselves, ‘Let’s go and get them.’ That’s the only thing that we had in unity, ‘Let’s go and get them.’ And then we would walk in and really the Blue Notes, we gave you know, we gave a lesson. I was happy that The Wire spoke about the Blue Notes in respect because we knew that we gave a lot in England.
JD: He went back six months later and he died there.
jd: And it’s strange because also Nick told me, and I must be blessed for some kind, I’m not talking myself, and I’m talking about my experience, at home I was accepted. I don’t know for what reason or why but I guess I don’t know, my attitude or my ways, because Nick before he went to South Africa, he told me, ‘You, you going to carry this. You the one. You got the right message.’
And he was crying, you know, because he’s leaving, going back home. And he told me, he said, ‘You’re the one. You’re the one who has this music from home.’ Phew! You know? I had to think about this things man. I spent some time in Europe thinking, what was the meaning of this? Because Mongezi was scared of me, he was scared in a way that is scary, ’cos sometimes Mongezi would look at me and say, ‘Hey sba, you don’t know you something else,’ you know? So one time in London I nearly wet my hair when he said, ‘Man, are you a South African or what?’
JD: This was the end of ’62. And I met the other guys, Dennis Mphale, he was in Tete’s group at this time. How I got involved with Blue Notes actually is the bass player, what’s his name? Indian bass player… Basil Moses gave me this gig ’cos he didn’t want to go to Europe for some reason. He gave me his gig and a bass. The scene was so tight, with all this mix, we had this you’d call it a UDF kind of feeling among the musicians at that time although politically it was not in that way though. Basil gave me this gig, he told me, ‘You can go to Europe.’
JD: Before I joined and before Mongezi joined the Blue Notes were… actually Dudu was the man who started the Blue Notes with Chris. But Dudu was behind all that and Chris was, you know, there, but Dudu was the composer and Chris was kind of the arranger of Dudu’s songs but Dudu was the one.
And Dudu was the one who taught Chris to play mbaqanga on the piano and showed him what it’s all about. Nick Moyake…Dennis Mphale was the trumpet player, before Mongezi, and Sammy Maritz was the bass player before Moses. Dudu was always there, Nick Moyake, and Elijah Nkwanyana on trumpet before Dennis, but anyway by the time Mongezi called me, Louis was always on drums… no, somebody else was playing drums before Louis. I met Louis before that, in Cape Town, and the Blue Notes started, with Sammy Maritz, was very interested into vegetarian, he worked at the market selling vegetables, so he said, ‘I’m not going to Europe either.’ So he stayed so I joined in, so we were touring, until we ended up going.
Keorepetse Kgositsile poem for Johnny Dyani (accompanied by Tumi & The Volume.)
JD: From records, yes. But this man, what was fantastic, he did traditional Pondo blues, within. He didn’t have to be changing, arranging, to be playing it and say well this is jazz. He was himself. And within a song there would come up all this…How shall I call it, SKANKA, which is a world, the Family of Black Music. It was there, that’s why I try to avoid to say jazz, because it’s a family of black, black family in the world. So he was doing that already, him and Mra Ngcukana. Him, this old man, and Christopher. Mra was the Albert Ayler before we even knew or heard Albert Ayler, because he was so-called avant-garde or free jazz. Mra used to call it… I remember when we were playing, that’s one thing I forgot, when we playing Back In Your Own Backyard, which is kind of Broadway, whatever, but when we do this they would let us play, they would let the band play, you know, in a sense what you call world music, so Mra now would say, ‘Let’s do the fowl run’. He’d call free jazz ‘fowl run,’ where everybody starts screaming, so that’s what he called so-called free jazz or avant-garde. In other words there were these two men who were very aware, and Nick of course. Nick Moyake. They were very aware of the world, the black family in the world of music. Of course they were very influential on Philip Thabane, and the other guy is Gideon Nxumalo, who, Gideon has a lot to do with Dollar, Abdullah [Ibrahim], because Gideon Nxumalo was also another piano player who was very advanced, also was into the world family, the black family, he was very aware, that’s why I was laughing on this record called The Rat Race. He titled this record because of Johannesburg, all this rat race, so he was so aware of things. So while the other guys were into Duke Ellington or Monk, these other guys they didn’t see no reason to say I am influenced by Ellington or Monk, they just saw it as one family, but they saw themselves as the originators. They accepted the other black family by accepting themselves, you know?
JD: Exactly, this is what I’m saying marabi was all about. And I grew up under that because, where I lived in the neighbourhood, you got all types, you could see a Pondo guy, wearing a Pondo blanket, you know, and then you see a Zulu, whatever, so the whole meeting it’s like a cultural house of some kind, even in traditional ways, like we, born in the city, and we see this guy wearing, you know, say damn! Everything was just educational, Now what was good about this marabi thing was that you had to be quiet to be able to observe that, ’cos if you are very city kind of, because everybody in the city thought they were educated just because they are in the city, so they took this thing for granted, so they took these guys who are wearing Pondo blanket or Sotho blanket, whatever…it was not like before in Johannesburg, where you can go in the mines and see that, but there in the Cape it was not that. They just came there to work in the factories or the mines, they were coming to see relatives in the weekend, so Friday night they started going to the disco, but this is a cultural house, so after school Friday, Saturday night, I’d be phew! I hear poets, I hear lyrics, I hear all kind of things, and I see guys wearing ties, schoolteachers, lawyers, drinking. For me being young I said to my brother, if you take me there, because of the awareness of my family they would say, wherever you are going to be you mustn’t go to concert halls like all that crap, I must go there to the shebeens, ’cos all the guys who passed that, who went to the concert halls instead, they came back very intellectual, thinking they know, so it was almost like someone goes to Europe, or going to university, college, and then comes back to Africa and he’s already telling his folks, ‘Now you must use sheets or a knife and fork,’ he’s already telling now his educators, ‘Wash your hands…this this, use a tissue, this this,’ and they look and say, ‘What’s wrong with him? He just went to college and he came back,’ like I go to Berkeley School and come back with all these notations, you know?
JD: The kwela thing came up, they send the youngsters, us, to the street corners, playing flutes, this is very hip now, guitar, watching the police, ’cos the policeman getting to know there’s something happening, in these places, there’s all kinds of dealings, and for me it was not a shebeen really, it’s only a term used in Johannesburg, you know, you say ‘shebeen’. No it was cultural houses where, you know, they serve African beer and you could relax. But now the police started destroying these things, scattering all those people from the villages coming in. Now whenever there’s police, they pick up everybody, that’s where the term came from, kwela kwela, the very van, we’d say, ‘There’s a kwela kwela.’ So automatically everybody knows what a kwela kwela is, but the police didn’t know. Kwela kwela just became, there it is, a bus whatever, it was all worked out. And then after kwela there came mbaqanga, now mbaqanga is the hippest term, because mbaqanga, those who come and jam in these places without knowing, now these are the so-called intellectual, educated fools in other words, who just be in the city thinking they are hip and then they go to these marabi places, they just walk in and order their, you know, beers, so they were just jamming in without knowing, now they started looking at these people from the villages as just these are what you call it, illiterate, they know it all from the cities, so now this word mbaqanga, the sell-outs, because some of them working for the government, you know, so we call them Jim-Come-To-Joburg kind of guys, so that’s when mbaqanga came in, so from kwela they made this click, they made this commercial, so as it went on immediately, so mbaqanga came in and really destroyed this kwela culture, because I remember in England, when we came there, we would hear these British rock musicians play mbaqanga, in the very function of it, I said damn, this is nothing but mbaqanga this thing, you know, it’s rock.
jd: That’s when Dudu again stopped playing in the form of let’s say, jazz. So he’s exploring what is happening within the pop. And he came up with this, he said it’s nothing but mbaqanga. Now there was these guys who went out the States, Hugh Masekela and them, now that was very fascinating because, these guys going to the States, they were so hooked up to think they were hip, though Miriam, she caught it balanced, she did heavy good work, then the other guy Gwangwa also did heavy, ’cos Gwangwa was writing for Miriam at that time, Gwangwa was writing strings, for these string quartets to play mbaqanga! Now as he tells me he rehearsed with these guys, and these guys would play and he say, ‘No, stop playing tee tah tah tee, start playing chichichichi’ and these guys couldn’t do that, so he changed, because Gwangwa’s aware also of this like Dudu, and then there was Hugh Masekela, because Miriam was an influence to Hugh, but there was this temptation of getting to mbaqanga as a commercial. So it did sell you know to the ears of the American black public, whatever, I guess them thinking that it’s a going-home kind of sound, but it was not really, but themselves the American musicians, rock or blues or jazz funk, whatever it was, they also got confused, because John Lee Hooker and them… As this thing in South Africa was changing, the John Lee Hookers also were taken out by Motown, into funk, you know it’s strange the Americans and South Africans in the cultural sense, you know, music, because we also, developed with a political thing, John Lee Hooker also talking about the thing, blues in the proper way, not blues ‘my baby left me,’ or blues ‘my baby go and get my Cadillac’. I remember at this party of Dudu in London, this guy was a friend of ours, well he was a rock musician, so he was playing the blues, a guy even older than John Lee Hooker, Dudu said, wait a minute man, this stuff is just like us, at home.
jd: Papa Ernest Ranglin! That’s the real blues, not this blues that they all talk about. We could play this twelve bar blues, sixteen bar blues, thrity-two bar, you know? We didn’t have a problem with those things, but there was this, be yourself in the blues, I hear the African blues. So this guys from the South, Mississippi, wherever, he heard this thing he say, ‘Wow’, and then when I was looking at the States, Hugh Masekela, he came out with ‘Grazing in the Grass’, we were kind of disappointed in a way because it became… the people in America, because that’s where this South African thing started, they thought that this is the thing. That’s what happening at home, and they took it halfway, now to take it halfway because they had it, in New York or California from Hugh Masekela and Miriam, and as we looked we wondered where Gwangwa was in between all this. Dudu went to play with Gwangwa in the States, African Explosion, and it was interesting because Dudu came back and said hey you know, because Gwangwa was really out of, let’s call it ‘the army’, the soldiers, or the supporters of this to bring it in, as it is… because OK, there’s Hugh doing it there, but it was Gwangwa feeling no man, no… So the more Gwangwa said, NO, these guys said ‘Gwangwa we don’t want to. Stop politics! We want money to pay our rent!’ So there was this new thing of talks now, you pay your rent man, support your family, but now that thing became more spreading, like, if you want to pay your rent, you better change ‘Mbube’ to ‘In The Jungle’… ‘Wimoweh’ and all that bullshit. Because when the Manhattan Brothers did that, they came to London and all of a sudden this thing was… Dambuza would say what’s going on, they just change this thing into du duh? So Gwangwa had to call Dudu, because he got to have somebody there who is also strong to play. So when Dudu arrived, Gwangwa started proving to these people, this is what I mean, it’s as simple as that, this is what I mean.
JD: So in a way he didn’t succeed because already these records were coming out, there was all of a sudden a hit, ‘Grazing in the Grass’, so Gwangwa was outplayed, in the sense of this commercial whatever, so it was painful in a way. I remember meeting some musicians, blues singers, they were in Europe, and they were asking me, because they heard Gwangwa in the States, they said we know this guy, we like that guy, he’s more sincere, they said, and I understood what they meant, and yet at the same time I met other Americans from Motown, who talked to Hugh and Caiphus, they said man you got to make it funky man, and it became tempting to others now. And then it tempted Dudu also now, because keeping on, of course it’s hard to keep on, especially when you’ve got the majority against you, in the so-called commercial, pop world. You try one, and then you try another… so you’re looking for the hit all the time, hit songs, hit songs. And now I can say I will try one because I know the same things, like I said, when we went to England I heard them in the rock groups that this is mbaqanga, and the rock groups funnily enough they were approaching me to play bass, and guitar, to do the mbaqanga thing within rock, and I was almost tempted, I said I’ll think about it. I told this guy from the Fairport Convention, ’cos this guy Joe Boyd, he was a manager, and I said, ‘I’ll think about it’ but I said no, it’s dangerous, because I knew I could also do it in another level, for example in the level of, let’s say Fela Kuti. This is what I was into, in the Fela kind of simple, crazy thing. Like Linton Kwesi he does reggae, he’s not doing it in that other kind of, his reggae is, you know, and to me I was not good in lyrics, I’m not good in lyrics, but I knew I was good to the heartbeat, you know, the only thing I was short of was to get somebody who’s good in lyrics and combine it. So Dudu said to me, ‘Come on man, play the bass,’ and he was doing it now with the Manhattan Brothers, trying this, so he was tempted to keep on, you know, because he keeps on listening to these other records coming now from the States, Hugh Masekela… By the time we heard that Hugh and them wanted us to meet so we said yes.
Johnny Dyani – Bass, Vocals; Mongezi Feza – Trumpet, Vocals; Okay Temiz – Drums, Percussion – Album:Rejoice (1972) – Label: Cadillac
jd: But, again, Mongezi, was playing trumpet, right? Mongezi was aware from an early age, let’s say me and Mongezi were aware from an earliest age of these things, it was kind of a natural thing really to be in the Black Family Music, without compromise, without saying I’m playing with rock now, no, I’m doing what I’m doing with, so when this Union of South Africa came, Caiphus, Hugh…Mongezi said, ‘Ugh but I don’t want to change the style,’ ’cos this thing had to change you, the style, you know? That’s what made me really, I said NO NO, ’cos if I have to change the style, I’m not only going to play rock, I could play rock, but now I have to change the style, I cannot do that, if I could play the way I want, like I always did, without having… ’cos these guys now they were talking about, Joe Boyd was talking about ‘you guys have to have a haircut’, or something like that, ‘you guys have to dress like this’, you know, you know what I mean? At that time they were making images of people, so they want to turn us into images. Because the artists, they tailor-made their clothes, haircuts, hairdressers were getting good money for doing the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, so it was not us who was getting money any more, because this thing is more than this. Fortunately my intuition was right, you know? Ok before that I met Wes Montgomery, now I step ahead of this conversation… Wes Montgomery wanted me to play, actually in France, in Nice. Horace Silver wanted me and Mongezi. At that time my view, my vision was already now, enlarged, I had a kind of a telescope, my vision, my eyes telescoped themselves. So I was not pushing it because I knew I was into another thing, whatever it was. And Wes Montgomery I met also in London wanted me to play with him, and everybody keep on saying, ‘Man this is great, he’s the most famous guitarist in the world,’ and you know I respected these people, not that I wouldn’t do anything with them, whatever, whatever, NO. I was just into another level, because I know for a fact, Barney Rachabane and all these guys in South Africa, we used to jam all night. We’d play ‘Stardust’ 24 hours, just ‘Stardust’. We’d get all these chords, the meaning of this and that, because we were doing this experiment to see is there any kwela, mbaqanga, anything in these songs. So that’s what we were doing.
JD: I’ll think about it… I keep on getting lost when I come to this part, I get lost every time I come to this bridge, so how come every time I come in then it sounds like some other song, so I tried to search in the chords, but it’s not the chords or anything, it’s something connected somewhere. So Nick turned around as he finished and he said, ‘Man, look it’s nothing but this,’ and he played mbaqanga song, da da dee da da dee duh duh and then diddle ah diddle ah, and I couldn’t believe this! So we were tracing, Tete, Barney, Mongezi, we were tracing all these songs, so we started playing all these standards, even from Charlie Parker, all these things, every standard, there was something to do with us as South Africans.
Okay Temiz – drums, percussion; Johnny Dyani – bass, piano, vocals; Saffet Gundeger – clarinet, violin; Gunnar Bergsten – baritone sax; Oguz – electric bass; Recorded 1976 in Istambul. Exact date unknown. Αlbum:”Witchdoctor’s Son” Label: Yonca Plak
jd: When we were playing some Charlie Parker songs, for example, and Clifford Brown, because we were really into Clifford Brown and Charlie Parker, Charlie Parker and Clifford Brown were the favourites in South Africa because of the high level they put the blues from John Lee Hooker into a challenge. Charlie Parker didn’t put that music into a classical way of challenging the white folks or whatever, Europeans or whatever, in the sense, they were playing and saying this is coming directly from the blues but we live in this time so we take it to this place. So now we were playing this Charlie Parker song and I remember Dick Khoza, we were playing a three-four, a song from a 3/4 waltz, and Dick couldn’t get this, and at that time musicians in Cape Town, we all met in Cape Town, painters, somebody who was doing something with art, poets, poetry in the corner, discussing this and this, a jam session going on, it was, a guy come from Durban, Pretoria this, all over the place, white, whatever, the whole now UDF thing, and yeah Dick is going uh uh, so Tete is looking at Dick, and Tete was very stubborn, very cheeky, he hated a musician who won’t hear it. When you finally say I find this, this standard is nothing but this, duhn duhn and then so if a bass player or a trumpet player or a saxophone player or a drummer didn’t hear it, Tete would say, ‘You sell out! You stupid or something?’
jd: So it was hard to get in that group of musicians now, it became more hard because all those who are aware became like the pillars, so the other ones who came in they had to know their shit now. It’s not only knowing the music or standards, they know ‘Summertime’ in and out but what did they know inside ‘Summertime’? So those black and white, whatever, Indian, whatever, mulatto, they had to know, because when Dick said chang chang, Dick said, ‘Hey, I cannot play this three four man!’ So somebody, I think Dennis Mphale, ’cos Dennis likes to laugh you know, loud (very loud screech), Dennis plays a great trumpet you know, and Mongezi standing there with his trumpet you know, so Dennis just stopped and laughed (loud cackling laugh), he say to Dick, ‘I thought you were a Zulu?’ Just joking, Dennis was like that, ‘I thought you were a Zulu, you should know this shit.’ You know your shit, bring it in, it’s nothing but a 3/4 Bra’ Dick, ain’t nothing but a waltz! And then somebody said, this is it you know (banging on the table). It’s Zululand! Whatever! And Bra’ Dick was, fortunately Dick was so much of a humble musician, because now we shouting at him and we shouting at him because also he’s older, it was like an Art Blakey vs Max Roach kind of thing to us, but now we youngsters just laughing at him, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ so he looked around and Louis was standing in the corner with Sammy Maritz… this was strange man because musicians, the bass players and the drummers, from that group, whatever, group it was, the trumpet player from that group, Mankunku was there, they would be standing in the room watching these guys jam, and whenever there was something wrong, some guy would just… and if you don’t know how to do this, just say ‘Sonny!’ so Bra’ Dick says, outsmarting everybody, so Bra’ Dick says, ‘Hey Moholo can you play this 3/4 for me? I like to hear it.’ Now again, because Louis was fantastic on these things also, Louis is just a little bit few years younger than Dudu, maybe three years, but now Louis being foolish, being hip, because we were hip also, you know, because Louis wants to show off now as how hip, and Dick didn’t mean that he should, Dick was aware that, you know, progress in generations to come and all this, now if a bass player trying to prove to me he’s hip, another bass player coming from another direction he kick his ass, now Louis goofed because he, so Dick said, ‘I see that’s how it goes, but I don’t need all that technical thing, just play me a 3/4, just go chunk chunk mah, whatever, then give me the sticks then I will,’ so Louis was putting extras and all. So everybody started looking at Louis now, because Louis was overplaying it, over-impressing, whatever it was, in this situation.
phillip wilson – drums – leo smith – trumpet
jd: So they started laughing, the laugh now was to Louis, ’cos Tete again was coming brilliant, sharp, although there was other piano players, ’cos Schilder and them they was just growing at that time, Schilder and his brothers, I remember meeting them in Cape Town, whole generations were there and this cheek, this nerve, so it was nice because it was not like here, when I met a musician here OK you just fall in if you know the theory or whatever, or that book, it was not the book there, it was, ‘Ok so what if you have been in university! But do you know ‘Summertime’ has got this sauce here, this salt here?’ So they were on Louis’ case, and Tete said, ‘Thebz!’ ’cos he called Louis Thebz, ‘Thebz! Why do you disappoint me now, why do you all get excited, don’t get excited man!’ Putting another level, you know, without being insulting, so everyone say, ‘Louis you getting excited!’ ‘Louis is getting excited!’ So I could see out the corner Sammy Maritz was wearing a big hat you know, he was wearing a coat of silver, but greyish I think, and a big hat, and this guy…if you had cheek, if you had nerve you could explain yourself and do whatever. If you walk in that room, I’ve seen musicians, painters, poets, even police shut up in there. Because first it was in, where was it? Selbourne? Mowbray? Yeah Selbourne, there was a big place there, that’s where it started, then they moved to Ronnie Beer’s place upstairs, that’s where now everything just became…the police were told to fuck off, all kinds of things, you know, you won’t believe this. Everybody thinks that this UDF kind of thing between artists and poets didn’t just start now, but then this thing of commercialism then made everybody just sell out.
jd: But anyway, then Basil was playing bass, then he finished and then Schilder’s brother failed, I guess he was still new at bass, whatever, ‘C’mon man,’ they always called these new guys, ‘C’mon pellie,’ Sammy was calling everyone ‘Ou pellie’, ‘C’mon pellie, c’mon pellie’. And it was nice because it was not a matter of he’s a coloured or this or that. If you played and if you had something to say… ‘C’mon pellie! C’mon pellie! C’mon broer!’ you know? All these guys, Chris and them, it was all, but you had to have the nerve to take that, I mean you had to really be very loose, and if you comfortable with yourself, someone would say, ‘C’mon ou pellie, c’mon man’ ’cos I was laughing, with Tete, another piano player was playing, so they called Chris Schilder and his brother, Basil say ‘C’mon ou pellie.’ So Sammy Maritz, took the bass, Sammy was a hell of a guy too now, a hell of a bass player. ’Cos he used to tell these guys, Louis and them, ‘Fuck you!’ I mean if anybody would fuck up, fortunately with me I was light though, I don’t know, my attitude or whatever, I was very light, ’cos I’ve seen people trying to manipulate in the scene itself, people manipulate each other, so Sammy liked me, another bass player, really accepted me. So Sammy was playing, ’cos he used to turn around, we knew Sammy’s sound, if you stood outside you knew Sammy’s playing, and Martin Gijima, that’s another bass player, I don’t know if you know him? They call him Lily, man he was phew! We would call him a horse, he was a horse, that guy kicked on bass. So anyway he was there, and he’s always shy, the guy was always neat, a jacket and tie, very neat. So Sammy didn’t like this guy because of this, I mean this is a personal thing of you just look at somebody and say ‘Ay man!’ So Sammy was playing and the minute he look at the corner, ’cos everyone who plays would look, while he playing he looks at you there, funny eyes (laughs), even if you wanted to sit in you say, ‘No no fuck it I won’t do this.’ So Sammy looked, and he looked at me and he was winking, so Lily came in, and Sammy changed, man! Also he was overplaying himself now, you could hear from the hit of the strings, and I know that this guy Lily was good on up tempo (knocks on the table with his knuckles). ’Cos him and Louis now this when they take these tempos up there… So Sammy, kind of guy who’s laid back, was, you know, bouncing. So when Lily came in, and Lily knew that everybody would be playing, and Sammy looked at him, grinning, so he finished… ‘Anybody else want to sit in?’ There’s always somebody sitting at the piano, so Lily came in, so he said, OK let’s sit in, Louis, Lily, Tete, and these three were very good together, they had some kind of intellectual unity going on with these three, as a trio, but in a level of both using it as, because Lily came with this intellectual thing, somehow when his presence was there, these guys started coming up, and they started this tempo, on this Milestones (clicks his fingers very fast), sjoe! So we were standing there, so Sammy looks at Basil and Basil looks at me and I look at Schilder, so Sammy says, ‘Damn, he’s doing it again, I don’t know where he gets this shit from, where does he get this shit?!’
jd: Now Mongezi! Mongezi is wiping out Dennis’ bottom! He’s kicking his ass man! So these guys now they had a thing of, they will come in, they play a set where you cannot fit in, making you ridiculous, if you sit with them they play games with you, with chords and notes in a song, like Mackay used to do, he play a song, a riff, a rhythm and then finish half a bar before you finish and you think it’s all over and the whole thing is paralysed, it’s a rhythm you know, like a crab, everybody complaining, ‘No, Mackay, don’t play like this, I don’t want to play with Mackay.’ And he did it purposely. So there were all these games of teaching you how to handle things, which is education.
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Mark Duby: My native country: Place, landscape, and memory in some South African accounts of exile
Filed under: hearing landscape critically,music,music and exile symposium — ABRAXAS @ 6:58 pm
[T]he Leader’s anger done, grant me the right to die in my native country. Ovid, Tristia
In this paper, I consider the roles of place, landscape, and memory in some South African accounts of exile. I focus on recordings, photographs, personal narratives, and auto-ethnographic perspectives that tell musical stories of both ‘exiles’ and ‘residents,’ often classified simply as those who left or those who stayed behind.
To my mind, this unexamined binary precludes the possibility of a third ground – ‘those who wish to be elsewhere.’ For a certain class of residents, ‘elsewhere’ may have involved an imaginary Europe, to which these individuals were tied by virtue of cultural links to a close or distant ancestry. For exiles, the homesickness and sense of being a foreigner in a strange land would lead them to wish to be home even under the dire circumstances of apartheid. I explore this notion of a third ground by drawing on the work of Jeff Malpas (1999, 2006) and Ed Casey (1993, 1998, 2000) who theorise place, respectively, as critically constitutive of identity and entirely subjugated to the philosophical concept of space.
In addition, I share some more personal thoughts on my early experiences as a musician in Cape Town as well as during a later period spent in Europe at the end of the 1970s. Through various narrative accounts the uniting thread is the relationship between place, landscape, and memory in Cape Town, as lived out in the personal and musical biographies of participants in a particularly turbulent time in South African history.
Marc Duby (University of South Africa) was born in Cape Town, South Africa, where he obtained a BA degree (majoring in English) from the University of Cape Town in 1975, having begun his professional career as electric and acoustic bassist in that city in 1972. He returned from overseas to begin musical studies at UCT in 1980, culminating in the award of the first masters’ degree in jazz performance (cum laude) in Durban in 1987, under the supervision of Prof Darius Brubeck. Duby completed his PhD thesis at the University of Pretoria in 2007 on the topic of soundpainting, the framework for live composition developed by the New York composer/saxophonist Walter Thompson. In a professional career spanning more than four decades, Duby has worked professionally with a wide range of local and international musicians, including Feedback, Syd Kitchen, Steve Newman, Darius Brubeck, Barney Rachabane, Feya Faku, Winston ‘Mankunku’ Ngozi, Jonathan Crossley, Philip Tabane, Paul Hanmer, the Kalahari Surfers, Nataniël, François Jeanneau (France), Sanjoy Bandophadyaye (India), and Ernest Ranglin (Jamaica) among many others. Awarded established researcher status in 2010 by the National Research Foundation, he has presented academic papers in Bologna, New Orleans, Spain, Greece, and Cambridge University, as well as serving as visiting lecturer at the University of Jyväskylä (Finland) and Universidad Veracruzana (México). His research interests include improvisation, embodiment, critical theory, jazz studies and philosophy of mind, as well as semiotics, phenomenology, music cognition and perception. A prize-winning composer of film music, Duby is active as a performer, composer/arranger and music educator, and currently serves as professor of musicology in the Department of Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology at the University of South Africa.
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Carol Muller: Diasporic musical landscapes: Abdullah Ibrahim and Johnny Dyani in an African space program
Filed under: 2014 - Marikana Symphony,hearing landscape critically,music,music and exile symposium — ABRAXAS @ 2:09 pm
The idea of landscape suggests something solid, material, an entity that enfolds, protects, resonates with, and brings comfort to human communities.
In this paper I will examine how two South African musicians living diasporically and ultimately in exile from the 1960s to the1980s, musically invoked acoustical images and feelings of lost/remembered landscapes to create acoustical expressions of home from far away. In this period the physical and human landscape at home began to fragment and rupture with state violence, community removals, and increasing fear; but equally the feeling of safety typically associated with home eluded those South Africans living diasporically and in exile. In response musicians living abroad began to explore the possibilities of a specifically South African contribution to the American dominated canon of jazz improvisation, through invocations of remembered landscapes from their home communities.
I will examine a handful of recording projects created by Ibrahim and Dyani after both converted to Islam, in which they experimented with reconstructing a specifically (South) African landscape through improvised music. There were three collaborative explorations:
African space program, Good news from Africa (1973), and Echoes from Africa (1979). They are book ended in this paper by two additional projects: Ibrahim’s African sketchbook (1969) and Dyani’s recording Afrika (1983). I use these projects to reflect on, and open discussion about, the possibilities and challenges afforded by a shift in the intellectual lens: from notions of ‘context’, ‘environment’, even ‘soundscape’ in ethnomusicology/ecomusicology to the ‘landscape’ as physical, political, historical, and imagined musical entity.
Carol Muller (Pennsylvania) is professor of music, director of the Africa Center, and fellow in digital and community engagement at the University of Pennsylvania. She has published several books, of which her most recent is a collaborative project with South African jazz singer Sathima Bea Benjamin. Musical echoes: South African women thinking in jazz (Duke, 2011). She is currently experimenting with, and thinking about the intersection between pedagogy and technology and global access to education, and redesigning the MOOC taught through Penn and Coursera, Listening to world music (37 000 registered students the first time it ran); writing a text for that class, Musically connected, to be published by Oxford, UP; and she brings American students to the National Arts Festival as part of the Penn in Grahamstown program in South Africa. Muller has taught at UKZN in addition to several American universities.
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hearing landscape critically: Music in the time of exile: Exploring the articulation of Tibetan identity in India
Filed under: hearing landscape critically,music,music and exile symposium — ABRAXAS @ 11:03 pm
In 1959, His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso, made his way to India. Alongside him and after him came thousands of Tibetans fleeing the abject persecution they were subjected to in their homeland in the wake of its occupation by Chinese forces. Today, 54 years after this first important ‘movement’ across borders – porous and dynamic as they had historically been – there exists in India a thriving Tibetan community-in-exile, more than 90 000 strong. The nervepoint of this community is the town of McLeod Ganj, the official residence of His Holiness, and the headquarters of the community’s Government-in-Exile, formally known as the Central Tibetan Administration.
In exile, there continues to exist a cohesive ‘Tibetan’ identity which binds and marks members out as distinct, even as it fosters their connection with the notional ‘homeland’. Since the Tibetans’ is a ‘live’ independence struggle, it depends for sustenance on the creation of new symbols which must serve as rallying points around which the postulation – and reiteration – of identity can constantly be generated.
The harnessing of music-as-communication is one such ‘rallying point’ around which calls for the preservation of Tibetan identity have long been voiced. This paper will focus on tracing the evolving soundscape of McLeod Ganj from the 60s through to present times, exploring in the process, the admixture of folk, country, blues and other extant ‘Western’ traditions the exile community ‘inherited’ by virtue of the town’s importance to the ‘Hippie’ circuit, into what has become contemporary ‘Tibetan’ music. This can be read as a movement parallel to (but different from) institutionalised attempts at preserving NangMa, Tibetan Opera, and other ‘traditional’ forms of music by the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts (TIPA) and other organisations.
This paper also attempts to analyse contemporary Tibetan music against the landscape of its creation and consumption, since it regards music as a cultural artefact, attesting to the contestations and negotiations of a people seeking affirmation and legitimation of their identity, and the implication of such demands on the shaping of ‘nation’ and nationality.
Harmony Siganporia (Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad) is an associate faculty member in the area of culture and communication at MICA. Her research interests include ethnomusicology, gender and music, and the language of social reform movements (with a particular focus on late nineteenth-century Western India). She is also a practicing musician.
Tenzin Tsundue is a poet, independent writer and Tibetan activist. He won the first-ever Outlook-Picador Award for Non-Fiction in 2001. He has published three books to date which have been translated into several languages. Tsundue’s writings have also appeared in various publications around the world including the International PEN and Outlook. Tenzin joined Friends of Tibet (India) in 1999, and is current its general secretary.
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steve voce’s obituary of dudu pukwana
Filed under: music,music and exile symposium — ABRAXAS @ 9:09 am
john fordham’s obituary of dudu pukwana
Filed under: music,music and exile symposium — ABRAXAS @ 11:23 pm
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south african jazz cultures
Filed under: Jonathan Eato,music,music and exile symposium — ABRAXAS @ 10:46 pm
more info here: http://ev2.co.uk/jisa/research/content.html
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dudu pukwana: cry freedom
Filed under: music,music and exile symposium — ABRAXAS @ 12:44 pm
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steve arguelles: working with dudu
Filed under: music,music and exile symposium — ABRAXAS @ 9:46 pm
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Dudu Pukwana – Mongezi Feza : Sonia
Filed under: music,music and exile symposium — ABRAXAS @ 11:17 pm
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