Cape jazz
| Cape jazz | |
|---|---|
| Stylistic origins | Jazz, folk songs |
| Cultural origins | 1990s Cape Malay |
| Typical instruments | Brass instruments, banjos, guitar, percussion |
| Regional scenes | |
| Cape town | |
| Other topics | |
| Marabi - South African jazz | |
Cape jazz (more often written Cape Jazz) is a genre of jazz that is performed in the very southern part of Africa, the name being a reference to Cape Town, South Africa. Cape Jazz is similar to the popular music style known as marabi, though more improvisational in character. Where marabi is a piano jazz style, Cape Jazz in the beginning featured (though not exclusively) instruments that can be carried in a street parade, such as brass instruments, banjos, guitars and percussion instruments.
Although there are strong influences from the American jazz, the development of Cape Jazz ran parallel to the course of American jazz in the early 20th century. Being born in a similar political climate to that in New Orleans, Louisiana, at the end of the 19th century, the blues songs that inspired this genre told of local occurrences in Cape Town. An example is the inspiration of the visits of the southern confederate raider The Alabama to the Cape in 1863 and 1864, resulting in the folk song "Daar kom die Alibama".
The leading exponents of this style of music in the 1970s are pianist Abdullah Ibrahim (then known as Dollar Brand) and saxophonists the late Basil Coetzee and Robbie Jansen. These three, together with bassist Paul Michaels, drummer the late Monty Weber and sax man Morris Goldberg, recorded the seminal Cape Jazz song, "Mannenberg". Composed by Brand/Ibrahim, the song takes its name from the notoriously crime-ridden creole working-class township on the Cape Flats of Cape Town. The township was one of several created by the apartheid regime following the clearing of the urban slum quarter known as District Six, a harbourside village home to many artists and musicians. Their US American contemporaries in the jazz field were taking on board rock and funk influences. Brand and his group were still being influenced by the more ethnic blues music.
Like the comparable music of New Orleans, Cape Jazz was mainly inspired by the blues and folk songs sung by creole people descended from the former slave communities living in the Western Cape, known loosely as the Cape Coloured or Cape Malay people. A street carnival parade or Mardi Gras (also called the Coon Carnival) is held each year peaking on 2 January. This event is the culmination of months of musical and dance rehearsal and community-based competitions, by various mostly mixed-race folk, and was known as Tweede Nuwe Jaar (Afrikaans). The performers, known as Klopse, borrowed the painted faces and bright consumes of the minstrel show style of New Orleans and combined this with African and European music that was to be heard in the taverns and night clubs of the port city.
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Wikipedia