By Gwen Ansell
ON DECEMBER 23, at the age of 93, reed player, composer and godfather of innovation in jazz (though he preferred the term “autophysiopsychic” for his music) Yusuf Lateef passed away.
Lateef’s achievements could fill an entire newspaper; for us, one of his most noteworthy is opening jazz audiences to the instruments and scales of African, Asian and Middle Eastern music long before the sometimes exploitative and shallow fashion for “World Music”.
On January 9, poet and cultural commentator Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) died aged 79.Baraka was the author of the influential history of jazz published in 1963 and titled Blues People: Negro Music in White America. As one of the founders of the 1960s Black Arts Movement, he helped to shape the intellectual environment that inspired jazz players and composers such as Cal Massey, Archie Shepp and Albert Ayler, and whose influence lives on for younger generations of radical players. Hamba kahle to both these pioneering spirits.
Too late for inclusion last year came the first artist announcement for the 2014 Cape Town International Jazz Festival, set for March 28-29. The festival has so far announced 19 names. With more than a dozen still to be unveiled, it is premature to assess the character of this year’s festival overall. But despite the usual mix of genres required to keep an event of this scale afloat, there is already credible jazz fare. Though the American crowd-puller is likely to be nu-soul vocalist Erykah Badu — just named as a 2014 face of Paris fashion house Givenchy — transatlantic visitors include the accomplished classic jazz singer Carmen Lundy, the saxophonist Kenny Garrett and, perhaps most interesting, the trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire.
The horn-man has accumulated a string of awards and accolades: from the Thelonius Monk Institute, the Downbeat critics’ poll, the Jazz Journalists Association and more, in the US and abroad.
Through a career that started in his mid-teens, Akinmusire has worked with iconoclasts such as the saxophonist Steve Coleman, the bassist Esperanza Spalding and the pianists Vijay Iyer and Jason Moran. This is how he described the power of that experience: “When I got to school and the teachers were telling me, ‘This is the history; play this scale over this chord,’ I would think: wait a minute, I know these guys personally and this is not the way they approach the music.”So it was weird for me. Music schools teach you how to be a great musician, but they never teach you anything about how to become an artist. The way the musicians I knew talked about the music was way more progressive than it was in school.… It was also weird that in school, anything after 1959 is not even recognized as part of the history.”
UK Guardian jazz critic John Fordham said of the trumpeter’s Blue Note album debut, When the Heart Emerges Glistening, “The newcomer already sounds like a redefining force.”
South African names announced so far include a long overdue return visit from the veteran trombonist and composer Jonas Gwangwa, and another return from Dr Phillip Nchipi Tabane. The malombo guitarist manages the paradox of drawing deeply on traditional roots while being perhaps one of our most iconoclastic players. He is 80 years old, and if you have not yet heard him play live, your musical education is incomplete. But younger jazz names on the bill are no less afraid of boundary-busting: bassist Shane Cooper, and 2010 Sama-winning duo Ological Studies: pianist Sibusiso Dlamini and reedman Phumlani Mtiti. Long before that festival, live music is back on the agenda. (Source: SouthAfricanJazz.com)