WINDS OF CHANGE
Three of SA’s greatest jazzmen reunite after a short 50-year break
IN the late ’50s a sextet of talented young musicians got together to form a band. In its short existence, The Jazz Epistles, consisting of Kippie Moeketsi on alto saxophone, Jonas Gwangwa on trombone, Johnny Gertze on bass, Makaya Ntshoko on drums, Hugh Masekela on trumpet and Abdullah Ibrahim on piano, would create music that left an important mark in jazz, both locally and internationally.
Masekela, Ibrahim and Gwangwa are the only remaining living members. A reunion had been in the works for a while, with The Jazz Epistles recently playing a few shows internationally before receiving an invitation to perform in Johannesburg.
The band’s genesis, Ibrahim says, was rooted in the desire to make a statement from personal, political and cultural perspectives. He and Moeketsi had been talking about starting something for some time. “I was really impressed with his understanding and view of where we would take the music,” says Ibrahim.
Starting the project in Cape Town in 1959, Moeketsi and Ibrahim were joined by Gertze and Ntshoko. They played as a quartet before Masekela and Gwangwa came on board.
Bra Hugh remembers first meeting Ibrahim and Moeketsi while working on the Todd Matshikiza musical King Kong. “Todd Matshikiza was looking for a replacement in the play. He led us to a young pianist who happened to be playing in town and it happened to be Abdullah Ibrahim. Back then he was known as Dollar Brand.”
Gwangwa reminisces fondly about meeting Masekela in St Peter’s high school in what is now Rosettenville, where both got their first trombones and subsequently started a band.
Later Gwangwa started playing at the Bantu Men’s Social Centre, which was then in Faraday, Johannesburg. There he met Moeketsi and Sol Klaaste, with whom he started playing.
In the very limited literature on The Jazz Epistles, they are described as having been a bebop band playing covers of songs by musicians like Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker. “We did not analyse what we did, we just played music,” Masekela says.
Shortly after its founding, the band grew in popularity and was soon touring the country, playing venues such as the Odin Theatre in Sophiatown. “We were the hottest group at the time, playing a lot of American music while composing our own music. Back then it was just fun,” Gwangwa says.
After a few months, The Jazz Epistles were invited to record Verse
1, the first full-length LP to be recorded by a black group in South Africa. Ibrahim says the album, which was recorded in two hours, was part of the band’s quest to assert the “validity” of its members in the face of apartheid’s attempts to deny it.
The Sharpeville massacre occurred shortly after the release of
Verse 1. A state of emergency was declared, meaning that many of the clubs where The Jazz Epistles
‘We were a precursor of what was to happen creatively in jazz’
played had to close. This led to the demise of the band. Masekela left for London and later studied in New York. Gwangwa went abroad with King Kong. Ibrahim stayed in Cape Town for a while and focused on mastering his craft.
The group was defunct but its impact lingered. Ibrahim says that years later when he met the likes of Duke Ellington, Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry they told him they had listened to The Jazz Epistles. “We were a precursor of what was to happen creatively in jazz internationally. We were avant garde and ahead of our time.”
The three surviving members of the Jazz Epistles will play two concerts in Johannesburg this week to mark the 40th anniversary of the June 16 uprising. Masekela remembers writing Soweto Blues in Ghana after hearing of the 1976 events, and Ibrahim says Mannenberg, first recorded in 1974, was an expression of “what was happening on the streets” during that turbulent time.
Gwangwa is delighted to be performing with Masekela and Ibrahim after so long. “Perhaps this is The Jazz Epistles Verse 2,” he says.
The Jazz Epistles will play at 6.30pm on Wednesday June 15 and 6.30pm on Thursday June 16 at Emperors Palace on the East Rand. Tickets R450-R1 500 from TicketPro