WATCH OVER US, BRA HUGH

With the inaugural Soweto International Jazz Festival starting this week, we asked one of our favourite writers, Tseliso Monaheng, to explore — in his own way — the relationship between jazz and the black South African experience

Afew months before he transitioned, bra Hugh Masekela, the stately, legendary, rock-star hornsman who kept township jazz a-jive throughout the ’90s — who waved the African flag high in Civil Rights-era America; who traversed genres, yet never lost the root of that kasi thing latter-day generations got to know him exclusively for; who, alongside mam’ Miriam Makeba, bra Caiphus Semenya and his life-long partner, mam’ Letta, et al., built upon the musical foundations laid by the Kwela and Mbube revues before them — held court with rapper swagg-straordinaire Riky Rick to chat intergenerational shandis, focusing on their respective eras’ take on music and fashion.

“Usually when people talk about jazz, they just talk about the musicians,” he said, referring to Louis Armstrong and his ilk. “But that first group of people [who] came out of New Orleans actually civilised the world. And out of that came all the genres. If it wasn’t for them, you wouldn’t be Mr Kotini,” he exclaimed.

“I lived in New York, on Sugar Hill, up on 148th & Convent Ave. And of course there was [Afrika] Bambaataa, Melle Mel… I just loved the stuff they did,” he said.

Despite his later objections to the artform, Bra Hugh was rapping on Techno-Bush, lest we forget.

Icame into jazz via hip-hop. My parents had records from Bob James, Yusef Lateef, Hank Mobley and Donald Byrd. Yet it was the Herbie Hancock single Rockit, which featured the record-scratching wizardry of Grandmixer DXT, credited as the world’s first turntablist, that set my mind ablaze. I found Nina when Talib Kweli and DJ Hi-Tek reflected eternally on Four Women, reworking the Mama Simone classic into bar-baric, manic beats and rhymes precision on their Train of Thought album.

The revered producer Mizi was filtering bra Andile Yenana’s keys on his Apple Mac a good decade-and-a-half before Statik Selektah sampled Tembisa (The People) for Joey Bada$$ to rap over. Nyambz helped colour an entire Pretoria hip-hop scene using a jazz-toned palette, and DJ Kenzhero, with his encyclopaedic crate-digger knowledge of the music and its histories, was right there orchestrating the rise of the then-emerging Fifi the Raiblaster.

I know bra Zim’s Zimphonic Suites back-to-front. I sampled heavily from it during my beat-making days. My earliest memories of the music we term jazz are strongly linked to family road trips soundtracked by Sankomota, Sakhile and Bayete. My Sunday afternoons were spent polishing school shoes while my father and his friend marvelled at the sound of bra Sipho Gumede’s esteemed sixstring bass guitar while Premier League Soccer teams aced it out on the television screen, a bottle of whisky or brandy sticking its transparent neck out on the table nearby, eavesdropping on the s’camto.

I got to know of bra Willie when he released his book of poems paying homage to South African jazz musicians. Tumi and the Volume had him spitting notes for a Blue Note when they featured his elegy for bra Johnny Dyani on their self-titled sophomore album.

Jazz is not only black-as-fuck to me; it’s eternally young, with an energy that can neither be contained nor contaminated.

The jazz experience in Mzansi is black, and there are as many ways to be black as there are black-identifying people in the world.

Jazz is African. It evolves into multiple identities. If in doubt, take a trip across the Atlantic, to Congo Square, and dissect the rhythms.

Jozi is the centre of this black experience we term jazz. This city is where Cape Town, Mdantsane and Mthatha, Pretoria and Port Elizabeth, and Durban and Limpopo coalesce to share their interpretations of the language. It’s cheered on in Pretoria where Sibusile Xaba and his Capital Arts Revolution brethren enact modern-day scripts of ntate Philip Tabane and his Malombo jazzmen.

It’s alive in the East Rand where The Brother Moves On, Malcolm Jiyane, former members of Impande Core and L8 Antique, carry forth the legacy and attendant spirit of bra Johnny Mekoa.

It’s active in Soweto where the Jozi Unsigned ladies and His&Hers Jams gentlemen curate transcendental music experiences that far outweigh the best around, and it brings reprieve in Cape Town through Jazz in the Native Yards’ shows that have hosted Nono Nkoane, bra Feya Faku, Tune Recreation Committee and others in hoods such as KwaLanga and Gugulethu.

It ruminates in dark corners and bright lights in eDubane where Rainbow Restaurant in Pinetown, one of the longest-running jazz venues around, plays both host to outta town talent and incubator of the Thekwini scene and its surrounds. It finds life through the images of Simanga Konstant Zondo portraiture of school-going children enjoying a live band as part of iSupport and Concerts SA’s schools circuit — initiatives aimed at growing an appreciation of live music among young audiences.

It crisscrosses the country with Ignatius Mokone and Hugh Mdlalose’s photographs of live performers in different music settings.

I sat as photographer Bridget Samuels paged through her tome of images made during her time at Staffrider magazine. She showed me snaps of bra Winston Mankunku in Eldos.

“He nearly left with our son,” she commented on one where the hornsman, responsible for composing the jazz standard Yakhal’inkomo, is at the door of a train leaving for Cape Town, handing an infant to its rightful guardians. Later, we congregated with Mak Manaka and others to speak about that Staffrider era of artists. They, too, drew abundantly from the music’s catchment areas, such as The Pelican in Soweto.

Says illustrator and crate digger Mzwandile Buthelezi, whose work appears on albums by Thandi Ntuli, Shabaka & the Ancestors, Benjamin Jephta and others: “There was a style and culture that developed in terms of art and drawing ekasi based on [township art]. Growing up eNdofaya, there were a few people that had Hargreaves Ntukwana and Fikile Magadlela pieces in their houses. So it’s not necessarily [Dumile Feni’s influence] alone (although this has been huge), but things I’ve seen ekasi while growing up.”

Jazz, yo: It’s now; it’s urgent!

Bring back Nelson Mandela, bring him back home to Soweto, sang Hughie in ’87. Nelson is gone. Winnie, back to whose house uTata would be going post-February 1990, is no more. And Hughie, he’s also gone. We, the now-generation, are the ones left. Hughie was correct about the influence of Louis and co. What he’d left out was how his era of innovators ran with the baton and influenced us.

We’re burdened with, and troubled by, unspeakable, unasked questions.

How do we carry forth not only the South African jazz idiom, but the continental jazz tradition, from Mzansi to Ethiopia and Kenya, to Nigeria and Mali and lands yonder, in order to forge a pan-Africanist identity through which AU’s bastardised dictates — by which they’ve failed to abide, it bears saying — are erased and replaced by active, loving, allencompassing modes of relating and co-existing?

Where do we find new air to breathe into this everlasting, black African expression termed Jazz?

The Soweto International Jazz Festival takes place from June 14-17 at the Soweto Theatre Festival Complex. Visit www.sowetoijf.com