Nduduzo Makhathini returns
The acclaimed pianist and composer shared his journey with us on completing his debut Blue Note album
Dawn is yet to break when photographer Siphiwe Mhlambi makes his way to Soweto. He parks his car by the roadside and leaps over the metal barrier to conduct a recce of the area below. This, he has decided, will be the location of the day’s event, a photoshoot for Nduduzo Makhathini’s forthcoming album. It’s the ninth the acclaimed pianist and composer will be releasing in a career that has enabled him to associate freely with luminaries in and outside Mzansi’s jazz scene.
Makhathini is not hard to miss. A distinguished figure with a fully realised beard and a mpandlana that peeks out of his permanently behatted head to marvel at his sonorous laughter, he arrives some moments later, and parks his vehicle not far from Mhlambi’s. He carries a change of clothes over to the location of our office for this morning.
A train makes its way towards Jozi on the tracks above as the flow of early morning traffic intensifies. Soweto is waking up, as is the sun that is threatening to break free from its slumber shortly. The photoshoot commences: Makhathini positions himself on the rocks in accordance with Mhlambi’s directions. Later he’ll immerse himself wholly in water.
By his own account, Makhathini’s a regular cat from the hood. He doesn’t like origin stories much —the ones that demand of Africans to construct heart-wrenching, rags-to-riches narratives. And this is where the puzzle lies. A cat who can be a present parent to three kids, obtain a master’s degree while heading up the music faculty at the University of Fort Hare, gig frequently in and outside the country, produce albums for other artists — that’s not some regular shit.
But wait until you check out his incessant social media activity and read his thoughts on healing, rendered as recollections on his personal blog, and then you’ll realise that “regular” is an obscenely misplaced label for him.
Have you seen him play the piano? Pantsulas were found gnashing their teeth at the free-flow of his foot routine. Even Thelonius Monk can attest to the fluidity, the ease with which he taps the floor while improvising.
But Monk is gone. As are Bheki Mseleku, Zim Ngqawana, Moses Molelekwa, Cecil Taylor and Randy Weston. Mc Coy Tyner remains the only one alive of his great line of teachers.
An attempt to grasp Makhathini fully implies an attempt at understanding the regular hood dude whose family went on an exodus from emaqongqo to embali because of the ANC-IFP fratricide that threatened to result in a stillborn rainbow nation before 1994.
This wasn’t the first time factional violence had erupted. The Battle of Maqongqo in 1840, for instance, was how inkosi umpande eventually came to rule Amazulu following his defeat of his brother, inkosi udingane, who was murdered while fleeing towards Eswatini after the massive defeat of his troops.
Improvisation is how Makhathini realises his gift of healing. And if the understanding is that he also was affected by the violence of the 1990s, then it should stand that the process of ubungoma is as essential for us as it is for him; that improvisation is how he finds healing, in the same manner that we do when we listen to his music, or watch him perform it as ritual.
‘When I was given the gift from a young age, it was given through water. According to how people read it, I actually drowned,” says Makhathini, speaking from the SABC’S M3 recording studios. He continues: “The elders in the village said, ‘It’s impossible for someone to drown for a long period of time, and come back with an empty tummy.’ So already, at that point, I was taken to the underworlds. So this record is my second visit to the underworlds.”
Makhathini has assembled a stellar cast of musicians to assist in realising Modes of Communication, forthcoming from the Blue Note label early next year. Our chat happens on the second morning of a three-day recording marathon.
The latter half of day one, photo shoot day, was spent setting up recording mics and performing ancestral rituals at the studio in preparation for the work ahead. Special guests came and went over the course of the musical feast. Among them were bra Ike Phaahla, a renowned broadcaster and supporter of acoustic jazz from days long gone; Bokani Dyer, a kindred spirit whose own journey deserves a heavy nod; bassist Zwelakhe-duma Bell le Pere’s father, who regaled the sessions with tales of picking up his son from school in New York City; and Makhathini’s three children, who accompanied their mom, Omagugu Makhathini, to record her feature on a joint called Yehlisan’umoya.
An established artist and teacher in her own right, Omagugu’s role in the success of her partner’s career is paramount. The volume of projects Makhathini has released since signing to the Universal Music Group has declined — only one album, Ikhambi, since 2017 — but his productive streak since his 2014 debut as bandleader, together with the accolades that resulted from that work rate, are due to the central role his wife played. At one point, they were shipping more than 5000 copies of each album from their home, released under their indie imprint called Gundu Entertainment.
During the conversation in the drum room located in a corner of the studio, Makhathini says: “The thing about Omagugu is that she’s such an amazing singer and someone so great — an amazing spiritual being and a master, actually. She’s sacrificed so much of her time contributing to my work. [Modes of Communication] is my ninth record, and she is on almost [all of them]. The kinds of contributions that she brings are just so enormous. It’s something so special.”
Omagugu’s voice — warm and inviting, gracious and full of love, classically trained yet seeking to challenge academic codes of vocal projection — paints artful hues on songs such as Love Story from Sketches of Tomorrow. It lights up the music notes with high-pitched flair on King of Kings and tones down the mood a few notches on How Sweet Thy Sound, both from Listening to the Ground. Her vocal range is Sarah Vaughan-meets-busi Mhlongo. The latter’s influence is realised on Yehlisan’umoya, in which Omagugu’s approach rattles generously with a gravity-defying, gratuitous grumble that recalls the original Urban Zulu’s incantations in song.
That Makhathini played on umam’ ubusi Mhlongo’s last album before she departed from Earth suggests a profound connection. And although he may be associated with the “jazz” label, the improviser points out that his aim is to transcend that barrier.
“I think genre was brought [about] by the coloniser trying to understand their people. The compartments were necessary for them, but not for us,” he says, after a night during which the diligent Afro-soul voice of MXO features on a radical interpretation of Emaphusheni.
The hymnal adaptations serve as a reminder that even when we express ourselves within the confines of worlds that other us, our modes of worship are brought into question — from izayoni, to Maria ’Mabasotho and more. We are a people who don’t perceive ourselves as being greater than the messages that guide us.
This approach to composition has gifted Makhathini the range to produce outer-bounds work with