[ad_1]
Another jazz club closed in Johannesburg this month. Open for less than five years, The Orbit was not legendary, it was located away from the suburbs where South African jazz was born, but it had succeeded in injecting vitality to the genre and the nightlife of Johannesburg. Yet even a complete list of young and old artists could not save the place of renting gentrifying rents.
Hugh Masekela, whose vitality has made the genre mainstream in South Africa and beyond, has also played here. A year after his death, January 23, after a long battle with cancer, the absence of Masekela is still felt. Bridge between young and old, exclusivity and pop, the popularity of Masekela was remarkable because he was able to jazz for the mbades because he understood their life.
Shortly after his death, one of Masekela's songs became a call for political mobilization, as President Cyril Ramaphosa used Thuma Mina to sound the trumpet what he called "a new era" in a South Africa shaken by the deception of corruption. It was a song that everyone knew already and that exploited the grief caused by Masekela and the post-apartheid troubles of South Africa. Like most slogans, it was quickly parodied, but the optimistic sentiment of the song remains a relevant message beyond a political campaign.
Released in 2007, Masekela had returned home long enough, after three decades of exile, to witness the euphoria of the end of apartheid and the freedom darkened by an AIDS pandemic, political corruption , the social ills of violence and addiction. The song, which is not strictly jazz but impregnated with the rhythms of South African gospel and harmonies of choral music, faces all the socio-economic problems that the country has yet to solve.
AP Photo / Damian Dovarganes
While some still discuss the question of whether music should have a political stance, Masekela's art and life were inherently political. After playing Sophiatown, a diverse neighborhood destroyed by the apartheid government, Masekela's life in exile has been relocated to South Africa. When he was finally able to return, his personal struggles against addiction and then cancer also inspired his music and activism. His canon contains many examples of music reflecting real life around him, like the very popular Stimela, who documented the lives of migrant minors.
Like his idol Miles Davis, Masekela refused to be "the guy of yesterday" and his music has continued to evolve while embracing young artists. Musically and literally, he frequented kwaito, house and hip-hop, but jazz was always at the base. Thanks to his genius and the strength of his great personality, a trumpet solo seduced new listeners of an old genre, when this genre might become a "museum" of its own.
In the homeland of jazz, music is no longer the soundtrack of poor black ghettos, but is now more often the background music of elite clubs in Scandinavia. This exodus is not surprising – musicians have to play so as to be paid. So, except for artists like Robert Glasper who are trying to maintain a connection with this other quickly gentrifying sound of urban hip-hop, jazz has become a long way from the experiences of its creators.
AP Photo / Peter Winterbach
South Africa has a long and distinct history of jazz and a plethora of new artists make sure it remains relevant, but the music is not played as loudly in the townships on a Sunday afternoon. This is perhaps what Masekela misses most: his ability to make jazz a sound that everyone can understand.
Sign up for the Quartz Africa weekly report here for news and badysis on African business, technology and innovation in your inbox
Source link
