By Chris M. Slawecki
Just when you think that you're beginning to get the world figured out, someone drops you a line and asks, "Hey, have you ever heard... ?" I was recently asked if I might be interested in listening to jazz from South Africa. This collection of artists and titles (of which your Senior Editor had previously never heard) not only demonstrates that jazz is vibrant and vital and growing the whole world over. It's also a reminder that when you take those first few halting steps down the path to true wisdom, you realize that--as learned as you may be--you don't know everything about anything after all.
Marcus Wyatt: Gathering (Sheer Sound)
Though Gathering is his debut as a leader, it comprises a mere portion of Marcus Wyatt's emergence as a major new instrumental voice. A trumpet player since age eleven, Wyatt has previously played with Courtney Pine, Abdullah Ibrahim, Manu Dibango, Walter Bishop Jr. and many others. He has a background in classical music, composition, and arrangement, and has won numerous international competitions including the Adcock Ingram Best Jazz Soloist for 1995.
Wyatt's debut delivers solid jazz not only across the space between South Africa and the rest of the globe, but in its own fashion also across time: Gathering is a great trumpet bop set that would not sound out of place among classics recordings of the genre such as those made by Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and the Horace Silver Quintet as these seminal groups frolicked and rocked through the 1960s. Think of the sound of the Messengers with Lee Morgan on trumpet, or with Freddie Hubbard on trumpet. That's the sound of this Gathering.
Softly romantic and beautiful piano introduces Wyatt's trumpet in the opening "Raindance," through which he skirts and dashes like raindrop sprinkles, bold and adventurous like Hubbard with upward modulation that creates the sense of soaring up and breaking through the chart, yet with more rounded and soft edges, sort of the way that Art Farmer might play a Hubbard solo. The angular blue melodies and spicy rhythms of "Owed to Bishop," "Sue's Groove" and "Dance of the Painted Faces" all fit this style too, and though their roiling drum rolls and cymbal splashes aren't quite as powerful as Blakey's, they serve as the same sort of musical engine room by creating the same type of rhythmic churn.
A modern trumpet record would hardly be complete without a ballad or nod to Miles Davis, and Wyatt accomplishes both in the soft yet sinewy "Lullaby for an African Princess." Finally, the quality of this recording also bears mentioning: It is simply stunning and clean. In several of its quietest moments, you can even hear the bass strings buzz and click against the fretboard (I thought I heard a door opening up the hall).
Paul Hanmer Ensemble: Window to Elsewhere (Sheer Sound)
Pianist Paul Hanmer has also composed for and performed and recorded with South Africa's finest jazz musicians including one of its most famous exports, vocalist Miriam Makeba. He was born in Cape Town and studied classical piano and theory training at Cape Town University. Hanmer's musical horizons blossomed when he moved to Johannesburg, where he worked in Top 40 bands, bands for cabaret and theater productions, and in jazz bands, most notably the trio Unofficial Language with drummer Ian Herman and bassist Pete Sklair (both fellow Capetonians). In 1997 Hanmer released his debut as a leader, Trains to Taung (Sheer Sound), which was rewarded with three South African Music Award (SAMA) nominations.
On his follow-up, Window To Elsewhere, Hanmer retrenches to re-explore his own original music, some of which has been in his repertoire for nearly a decade, presenting definitive interpretations of original music by a talented improviser and composer, recorded over two days in a warm acoustic setting.
Though there's nothing to fault in Hanmer's piano playing, the real star shining through this Window is not his piano virtuosity, but his compositions and their instrumentation and arrangements. There are several simply beautiful compositions, many with unusual instrumentation (unusual for modern jazz, at least) such as the title track for cello, clarinet and piano. These same three pieces build the eight-minute "Oxtinato" into this set's centerpiece: It closes with the same simple, repeated piano figure with which it opens (thus the delightful wordplay: the Latin root for "ostinato" is the same root for the word "stubborn," and Hanmer was born in 1961, the Year of the Ox in the Chinese calendar), as the ostinato piano figure lays down the floorboards upon which the clarinet dances and twirls. Like great Hellenic architecture, it is full of soaring empty spaces and majestic pillars. "Dominee's Seventh" and "Secret Greek Hi-Fi" are similar constructions in which Hanmer's piano intertwines with acoustic guitar, violin, cello, voices, even Tibetan percussion, to create gorgeous trellises of melody.
"After Cecil and Alarice Marry" is the leader's showcase. This solo piano ballad has a peculiarly American heartland feel, like one of Keith Jarrett's "Standards"; the only thing this tune needs is lovelorn lyrics, and it's a Billy Joel hit.
Robert Pickup on clarinet is simply dazzling on this record, and Hanmer wisely provides Pickup plenty of room throughout.
Themba Mkhize: Tales From the South (Sony Jazz SA)
Pianist Themba Mkhize has been a strong South African musical presence for two decades, though Tales, his first album as a leader, wasn't recorded and released until 1999. Like Hanmer, he is a pianist with classical training whose formative experiences consisted in part of playing in theater orchestras (Mkhize held a performing role in "Buwa," which toured Libya, Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe, even while he was a member of the renowned South African band Bayete, with whom he spent a decade).
In 1994, Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela triumphantly toured Europe and the U.S. with Mkhize as their musical director and pianist. More recently, he produced the 2000 debut album by South African mezzo-soprano Sibongile Khumalo, Ancient Evenings, which won three SAMA Music Awards. Tales From the South, Mkhize's own self-produced debut, won two South American Music Awards, for Best Producer and Best South African Traditional Jazz Album.
This debut embraces a unique type of global fusion, combining contemporary jazz with the South African vocal tradition known as "Isintu" to create a new "Safro" (South African) beat. It is hardly a jazz pianists' record in the sense of an Art Tatum or Bill Evans set, and listeners hoping for long and complex piano solos will be disappointed. This is more like a Stevie Wonder record instead; it's obvious that the piano was the main compositional tool, but the piano sounds only a single voice within the chorus of the group identity.
From its opening track, "Ngaliwe,"Tales displays Mkhize's gift for composing melodies which flow as cool and soft as a refreshing breeze. In "Ngaliwe," his piano provides the melodic and rhythmic pool from which African vocals emerge to splash the surface, sparkle in the sunlight, dance with the flute solo, submerge and then softly reemerge once more. "Until When" could be a Pat Metheny / Stevie Wonder summit with a dash o' Ramsey Lewis piano. The keyboard / flute melody to the Oriental / South African fusion piece "East Meets South" REALLY suggests a Metheny melody, light and airy and gently grounded in (Lyle Mays-ish) piano. The pianist next employs a cool, pastel Ahmad Jamal sound in his twinkling mid-song "Ilanga" solo. Masakela guests with his trademark flugelhorn sound on "Ikhwezi," named for the morning star in Zulu mythology.
Here's a definition for the curious from the South African National Gallery:
"The word 'isintu' derives from an Nguni term, which has no direct English translation or one specific meaning. It incorporates the whole philosophy of 'Ubuntu' which is about human interaction, goodwill behavior, and generally a consideration of one another. Isintu reflects a collective African perspective on life, where an individual is seen as an integrated member of a collective community."
Damn if that doesn't sound like the definition of a great jazz ensemble, too.
Themba Mkhize: Lost & Found (Sony Jazz SA)
This follow-up to Tales won three South American Music Awards, and helped gain Mkhize the annual DaimlerChrysler Award for South African Jazz. In announcing its decision, the international jury, a seven-member panel that included Clark Terry, noted that Mkhize is a musician whose work stands for both South African jazz and for jazz music in South Africa.
"This album celebrates South African music and songwriters," Mkhize explained in an interview with The South African Sunday Times. "The title of the album is in line with the concept of African Renaissance. Our songwriters and our music are so great that I got the music from the '70s and the '80s and tried to give it today's feel, like on the Soul Brothers track where I used loops to take it straight to the dancefloor. Our music and culture could be lost if we believe it is inferior. And yet it's not, it's great."
Lost opens with an a cappella track, "Thililedam," Mkhize's own composition and in his own voice. "Nomathemba" is almost completely vocal too, Mkhize's rearrangement of a song made famous by Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Mkhize even swings with swivel-hipped jive, updating "Ngihamba Nawe," a 1970s South African hit by the Soul Brothers, with a looped New Jack Swing drum track (he uses this same supple device on "Smooth Operator," penned by Themba's son Afrika).
A flute, keyboard, bass and percussion quartet piece that somehow sounds both completely exotic and natural, "Song 4 Mo" is Mkhize's tribute to a fallen comrade and friend who passed away while Mkhize was recording Lost & Found, South African jazz composer / pianist Moses Molelekwa. The leader's piano turns include exquisitely delicate accompaniment (and a Hank Jones-ish midsong break) in "Emakhuzeni" and the stunningly beautiful solo "Light of Our Life" which suggests Keith Jarrett playing a hymn, and closes this set.
Track and personnel listings:
Marcus Wyatt: Gathering. Tracks: Raindance; Owed to Bishop; Lullaby for an African Princess; Sue's Groove; Jessica; Dance of the Painted Faces; Freedom Love Song; Divination; Breathe..; Raindance (electric). Personnel: Marcus Wyatt - trumpet; Carlo Mombelli - bass; Andile Yenana - piano; Johnny Fourie - guitar; Sydney Mnisi - tenor sax; Buddy Wells - soprano sax; Herbie Tsoaeli - acoustic bass; Lulu Gontsana - drums; Gaston Goliath - drums ; Afrika Mkhize - rhodes; Yelena Revishin - vocals.
Paul Hanmer: Window to Elsewhere. Tracks: Secret Greek Hi-Fi; Oxtinato; Dominee's Seventh; After Cecil and Alarice Marry; Sekuhara; Abrete Sesamo; Window to Elsewhere. Personnel: Paul Hanmer - piano; Barry van Zyl - drums & percussion; Cecil Mitchell - vocal & percussion; Kendall Reid - cello; Robert Pickup - clarinet; Jonathan Crossley - acoustic guitar; Kaolin Thomson - flute; Mccoy Mrubata - flute & sax; Costa Nikolau - acoustic guitar; Jaques Fourie - 2nd violin; Liesl Blokker - viola; Ricardo Colima - 1st violin; Robert Carter - bass clarinet; Wolfgang Jacobs - cello.
Themba Mkhize: Tales From The South. Tracks: Ngaliwe; Es'mobeni; Until When ; Ilanga ; Ikhwezi; Amankwebevu; Ushaka; Under Pressure; Inner Peace; West Street; East Meets South; Reprise (es'mobeni). Personnel: Themba Mkhize - piano, keyboards; Tlale Makhene - percussion; Vusi Khumalo - drums; Kelly Petlane - flute; Hugh Masekela - flugelhorn; Johnny Chonco - guitar.
Themba Mkhize: Lost & Found. Tracks: Thililedam; Emakhuzeni; Caution; Ngihamba Nawe (I'm Going With You); Yiyo; Emkhumbane; Nomathemba; Smooth Operator; Song 4 Mo; Konke; Hloniphani; Light Of Our Life.
