Jazz At JAG

Drums brushed in tipsy strokes as bass walks.
Enraged fingers slithering on a Bosendorfer poked by a revered band leader in lament.
That was jazz, trumpet belched in twin storms, and the vaunted humbleness of Nduduzo Makhathini strutting over keys in a tempestuous calm seeming alchemical.
Could one assume that musos suffer a self-aggrandised demeanour to their vocation?
By divine setting, I was in the right place at the right time, when JAG was celebrating some 100 years of its existence and at this session organised by some of Jozi’s ardent followers of the local jazz scene.
The crowd was sensual, hypnotised by his musical aptitude.
They listened to all the escapades of fellow necromancers on their toys of choice.
At times I wondered if Tumi Mogorosi’s drum solos were bothering on trivia, when handling sticks with jovial nonchalance of loose rhythms and cymbal chimes.
I think that his is a genius of play that resurrects a child in any lover of music.
Undeniably their selection represented a potent force of libation for a forgotten ancestry, feisty and direct.
Nduduzo duly calls the music a voyage into ancestral realms, through their muddied sweat or something like that.
And as is, I believe these artists have their genesis in a body of classical folk songs which have moulded their sensibilities, and they sound well versed in compositions of giants.
And carried on those colossal shoulders of the departed, they could not falter but transpose those ancient wails into a new musical vernacular.

But how does his sound translate into a validation of information about his séances with the ancestral?
Perhaps, as I was convinced, this music is an invocation of the dead into the realm of us the living dead.
A call back from our graves of contemporary exclusion from the aural and thus providing a framework for his ensemble to reassemble emotional puzzles which seem to be Nduduzo’s dilemma about those who shut their eyes to the present.

The extraordinary freedom of improvisation embodied in his compositions, even though by knowledge the music is stringently composed, is something to ponder, because instead of palming off a fantasy of sodden deliverances his entourage seems to speak of real reserves of self-control inside the African psyche.
Take for instance the staccato gusts from Mthunzi Mvubu’s saxophone.
They seem too impenetrable for a layman like me, but I dug how he explodes into a wide range of tonal possibilities inherent in that instrument.
He adds mystery to mastery.
Thus I say, this ensemble, with unmistakable grace have forged an organically righteous sound of a same-minded communion, and if surprise is of the essence in artistic pleasure, there was plenty of that in their session.
Nduduzo’s compositional freedom comes with mastery of one’s craft, and one is thus compelled to appreciate the musician’s virtuous versatility and bravery to reinvent already existing aural dimensions to relay the new.

I'm no aficionado of jazz, but I was somewhat troubled by the seemingly overt white patronage of the session, but what could one expect when the JAG is a cathedral of white craft underscored by black expression caged in cubicles that are often obscured by granite and glass barricades?
But perhaps the tide of change has arrived, bagged in satchels of bespectacled revellers crowding Joubert Park, and those proselytes taunted by zealous pick-pocketing youngsters baked by the Jo-hazardous sun.

One crowning glory was sights of children gallivanting among heaving musicians, seemingly more interested in the gyrations of this five piece entourage in full swing under a slight drizzle.
No deafening silence was allowed by these children during intervals, and their voices, as part lyrical to the antique meanderings of sound, spread an ecstatic air among the patron of the session.
One such youngster was even assisting Nduduzo pour pianic milk into ears unclogged by wide open mouths stretched in mirth and awe.
And what mischievous little fingers they were.

Another artist stands in the periphery of my eye, sketching on a giant board what appears to be a piano, a band of instruments basically.
He seems to be in a trance of his own, music a shuttle in which he is navigating the canvas.

So, who actually are these cats?
Irrefutably some new colours in the motley tapestry of SA jazz, an addition to those contemporary musicians that matter, by the likes of Carlo Mambelli, Marcus Wyatt, McCoy Mrubata, Paul Hamner, Kasivan Naidoo and Siya Mkhuzeni to name a few.
And they are young.
Some quite younger than the musicians I just named.
Now, that has renewed my faith in the radical potential of jazz music in this country, its transformative intimacy that speaks to the divine in each one of us now seems possible in this desert of talent and museums of narcissistic performers, young and old.
And they are a dynamic, each holding their fort.

There was that small frame and sleight built trumpeter Robin Fassie Kock, lisping with vigour and us enjoying the spoils.
Bass thumbed and slapped by nimble pressure of Ariel Zamonsky’s astute hands.
Tumi Mogorosi’s solid rhythms letting them pace over black and white under Nduduzo’s grasp, and the kettle drum timbre, rattling the joint in applause of a saxophone’s entry.
The trumpet and sax seemed like twins at some moments of arrangements, but it made sense that the twins would bear an asymmetry ordained to all things in the universe.
But they waltzed in some dazed unison, blurting slurs and blessings in a dance only those born of the same wound would muster.

Oh!
I later eavesdropped on a conversation between fathers, suggesting that the sessions should have playgrounds for the little rascals.
Another went as far as suggesting a chaperone who would take them on tours about the gallery before the show.
I thought those would be cool ideas, also thinking about my young ones who should be here within these primordial walls now soothed by spiritual sounds.
So, we all best attend every first week of every month in support and to attest to an enduring wellspring of local talent in a space that is antiquated but brought to life each time a note is struck.

Images by: Khahliso Matela and Tseliso Monaheng