Jazz and the Freedom Principle

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Jazz and the freedom Principle

By: Percy Mabandu

Breakfast is a very deceptive word. A malleable one too. Think of the way it rings on a sentence announcing a Standard Bank Joy of Jazz Festival Breakfast Colloquium with the theme: Jazz and The Freedom Principle.   

Here we can massage it into meaning a breaking of a kind of discursive fast. Not just a curated gathering of jazz heads breaking bread over some themed chatter. Either way, yours truly hosted a cadre of refreshing cross generational Joburg jazz folk to grub and mind grind on the chosen topic.

Saxman and composer, Steve Dyer sat alongside the rising vocalist, Spha Mdlalose, young trumpeter, Mandla Mlangeni and the doyen of South African journalism, Gwen Ansell. Helped to stimulate a hip horde through a timely topic: Jazz and The Freedom Principle.   It was chosen in part to mark the 20^th anniversary of South Africa adoption of the Constitution that governs our experiment with democracy.

Dyer and Ansell brought a deep memory of the national creative struggle that led to democracy. Mlangeni and Mdlalose represented a young generation that inherits both the music and the tradition of struggle the former two lived through. For instance, while Mlangeni today leads a band he calls the Amandla Freedom Ensemble, Dyer was a member of the Amandla Cultural Ensemble in the dark apartheid years; an inspiration for the young trumpeter’s band.

As the chatter got hotter, two streams of thought immerged that consumed where everyone’s head was at: While there is a genuine jazz tradition in SA, we also must promote our indigenous music. Just as we can hear the blues in American jazz, we must hear our traditional sounds in ours so we can export our uniqueness and monetise it for our socio-economic development. The other stream of thought celebrated jazz’s unavoidable roots in African traditions that survived the slave journey across the Atlantic Ocean. The music’s loftier features can be found in our indigenous traditions too. Improvisation within structure is central to how African cultures articulate themselves. This is what we celebrate in jazz as the democratic process incarnate.

In Jazz music, “the demands on and the respect for the individual in the jazz band put democracy into aesthetic action. Each Performer must bring technical skill, imagination and the ability to create coherent statements through improvised interplay with the rest of the musicians on the bandstand. The interplay takes its direction from the melodic, harmonic rhythmic and timbral elements of the piece being performed,” as Robert O'Meally once put it. This is exactly like freedom in democracy. It is no wonder that democratic South Africa is jazz crazed. The one deepens the other.

Percy Mabandu is a columnist, and art and features writer.  His work has appeared in various newspapers and magazines including the weekly City Press, Blaque Magazine, the Sunday Times, Mail & Guardian, Rolling Stone Magazine, Chimurenga Chronic and many others.