Mannenberg

"Mannenberg"
The cover of the album on which "Mannenberg" was the first of two tracks
Song by Dollar Brand (Abdullah Ibrahim)
from the album Mannenberg - Is Where It's Happening
Released	1974
Genre	Cape jazz
Length	13:37
Composer(s)	Abdullah Ibrahim
Producer(s)	Rashid Vally

"Mannenberg" is a South African Cape jazz musical piece by Abdullah Ibrahim, first recorded in 1974. Driven into exile by the apartheid government, Ibrahim had been living in Europe and the United States during the 1960s and 70s, making brief visits to South Africa to record music. After a successful 1974 collaboration with producer Rashid Vally and a band which included Basil Coetzee and Robbie Jansen, Ibrahim began to record another album with these three collaborators and a backing band assembled by Coetzee. The song was recorded during a session of improvisation, and includes a saxophone solo by Coetzee, which led to him receiving the sobriquet "Manenberg". The piece incorporates elements of several other musical styles, including marabi, ticky-draai, and langarm, and became a landmark in the development of the genre of Cape jazz. The song has been described as having a beautiful melody and catchy beat, and as conveying themes of "freedom and cultural identity." It was released under Ibrahim's former name Dollar Brand on the vinyl album Mannenberg - Is Where It's Happening. Named after the township of Manenberg, it was an instant hit, selling tens of thousands of copies within a few months of its release. It later became identified with the struggle against apartheid, partly due to Jansen and Coetzee playing it at rallies against the government, and was among the movement's most popular songs in the 1980s. It has been covered and included in collections several times.

Abdullah Ibrahim was born in Cape Town in 1934. Before his conversion to Islam in 1968, he was known as "Dollar Brand." He had a mixed racial heritage, making him a coloured person according to the South African government. His mother played piano in a church, the musical style of which would remain an influence; in addition, he learned to play several genres of music during his youth in Cape Town, including marabi, mbaqanga, and American jazz. He became well known in jazz circles in Cape Town and Johannesburg, and in 1959 joined Kippie Moeketsi, Hugh Masekela, Jonas Gwangwa, Johnny Gertze, and Makaya Ntshoko in forming the mixed-race group The Jazz Epistles. Although the group avoided explicitly political activity, the apartheid government was suspicious of it and other jazz groups, and targeted them heavily during the increase in state repression following the Sharpeville massacre. The Epistles broke up, and in 1962 Ibrahim went into exile. In the 1960s and 70s, Ibrahim and his wife Sathima Bea Benjamin largely lived in exile in Europe and the United States, returning to South Africa only for brief periods of time. He lived for a while in New York City, playing with the band of Duke Ellington and learning composition at the Juilliard School of Music. As the Black Power movement developed in the 1960s and 1970s, it influenced a number of Ibrahim's friends and collaborators, who began to see their music as a form of cultural nationalism. Ibrahim in turn began to incorporate African elements into his jazz.