This blog was going to be a routine year-end roundup, before the sad news landed yesterday, December 7, of the passing of an icon of the South African recording industry: Rashid Vally of the Koh-i-Noor record store; founder of The Sun, As-Shams and Soultown labels at the height of apartheid’s cultural repression and, more recently ..read more

Polymath doesn’t begin to describe Mpumi Dhlamini. Since graduating from the Drakensberg Boys’ Choir and the National School of the Arts, he’s developed a strong reputation as a multi-instrumentalist performer, composer, producer (from the gospel of Tshepo Tshola to the Afro-soul-jazz of Wanda Baloyi and lots in between) and composer of scores (including for the ..read more

What is there left to say about trumpet and flugelhorn player Feya Faku? We already know he’s a trumpeter who marries skilled chops to emotional force that can blow you away. No need to repeat he’s a prolific composer; every one of his ten or so albums (depending on whether and which collaborations you count ..read more

There are all kinds of musical myths about Soweto back in the day; one of the most pervasive is that rock was never played there before revolutionary bands like Blk Jks emerged in this century. It suits overseas journalists to draw easy, unresearched contrasts, saying, like this fellow writing for a Dublin music publication (https://www.totallydublin.ie/music/music-features/clash-city-rockers-interview-with-blk-jks ..read more

We haven’t had an album from the Kyle Shepherd Trio since 2014’s Dream State, the year the Cape Town-born pianist was acknowledged as Standard Bank Young Artist for Jazz. But that silence doesn’t mean the ensemble (Shepherd, bassist Shane Cooper and Jonno Sweetman on drums) has been idle. They’ve continued to work: on stage and ..read more

A giant tree has fallen in our music forest. Quincy Jones, trumpeter, bandleader, composer, producer, civil rights activist, humanitarian, jazz musician, pop musician, everything musician, died on Sunday. There are excellently detailed biographies all over the internet right now (for example https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg74zn1dy9o) and, unusually, even Wikipedia does his life justice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quincy_Jones). I’m not going to ..read more

Congratulations to Steve Dyer for his SAMA jazz win with Enhlizweni (https://stevedyer.bandcamp.com/album/enhlizweni-song-stories-from-my-heartland): a well-deserved acknowledgment for an album imaginatively conceived and beautifully played – including the most convincing re-visioning of Senzenina I have yet heard. It’s also important recognition for a new label (Africarise) that already – though less than a year old – is ..read more

This has nothing to do with music. But I’m both upset and puzzled by how the tragic deaths of schoolchildren from what may have been contaminated food (no lab results have yet been published) has turned into another epidemic of hate against fellow Africans. And by the silence around this pervasive, creeping hatred. A more ..read more

Too much is happening in South African jazz right now. Too many album releases; too many tours; too many live gigs now all packing in to the helter-skelter downhill run to year-end. After which, please remember, performers may earn nothing for three months or more until audience budgets recover from punitive school fees and such ..read more

Birthday respect to Dr Abdullah Ibrahim, who celebrates his ninetieth today. South Africa’s most respected jazz pianist marked his ninth decade with a world tour, just concluded, and – happily for the world – is still playing, teaching and composing new music. He shares the birthdate with the late John Lennon and – inexplicably and ..read more