The sound of change

By the 1930s, the Johannesburg suburb of Sophiatown had grown into a vibrant and vital hub for black urban culture. It was here that the cyclic sounds of marabi and big band swing had fused to create the progressive foundations of African jazz, and where flamboyant but dangerous sharp-suited gangs with names like The Americans and The Russians ruled the dance. As Gwen Ansell explains in her essential book Soweto Blues, when Drum magazine asked its readers what they wanted the answer was: “Give us jazz and film stars man! We want Duke, Satchmo and hot dames. Yes brother, anything American. You can cut out this junk about kraals and folk tales and Basutos in blankets.”

The clearances of Sophiatown (and similar areas like District Six in Cape Town) saw black South Africans torn away from their cultural roots, and dumped into the Soweto townships, split up along divisive ‘tribal’ lines. Following the crushing brutality of the Sharpeville massacre in 1961, black musicians were faced with ever-harsher conditions as apartheid’s grip became more vindictive. But against a background of restriction, separation and intimidation these musicians’ bravery and ingenuity became vital to the struggle, as the Townships responded with music as a weapon. This three part series from Strut is a vital document of that period when Soweto’s musicians rose up above the monster that was apartheid.

Township Sounds From the Golden Age of Mbaqanga

The term mbaqanga had first been used in the late 40s to describe the early sounds of Sophiatown jazz, a style best represented on this collection by Reggie Msomi & The Hollywood Jazz Band’s joyous ‘Soul Chakiri’. But in its golden era of the late 60s, mbaqanga became most closely associated with groups like Mahlathini & The Queens who fused traditional rural music with the electrified sounds of the townships, to create music that spoke loudly to the increasing numbers of rural migrants. As David Coplan’s informed sleevenotes explain, the raw voiced Mahlathini evoked a “rural landscape of the imagination...in the midst of urban hardship and insecurity.” As always, Strut dig that little bit deeper thanks to compilers Duncan Brooker and Francis Gooding, on an album that picks up from Earthworks’ influential mid 90s series Indestructible Beat of Soweto. It’s an excellent and diverse compilation that reveals a wide variety of different styles including many releases from lesser-known groups alongside the legends. While many of the stars of mbaqanga clung to their rural roots with strident song and dance reviews, others took a more revolutionary stance - as jazz became the sound of rebellion.

Next Stop…Soweto Vol 1 

Giants, Ministers & Makers

“If the African child was taught music which he felt was satisfying, the synthetic attractions of jazz would gradually assume ever decreasing importance,” stated a typically paranoid Bantu music education thesis in the mid 50s. Such was the threat to the authorities of a sophisticated worldly aware black urban population that jazz musicians took the brunt of the clampdowns and censorship. Just as much of a threat was the racial interaction that jazz inspired, and as part of the Separate Amenities Act of 1963 mixed gatherings were banned.

At the same time all jazz musicians were closely monitored, as Abigail Khubeka, singer in The Skylarks alongside Miriam Makeba, explained to Gwen Ansell: “Once you were on stage, somebody, the bouncer, had to look out for the police, and the minute the police came, you would run inside and alert the owner…And I would run to the kitchen and pretend I was washing dishes.” The conditions became so serious that following the seminal 1961 Jazz Epistles LP Verse 1, which had confirmed be-bop’s arrival on the scene, two of its members, Hugh Masekela and Dollar Brand, left to become important voices overseas. Others followed like white pianist, and fluent Xhosa speaker, Chris McGregor and powerhouse saxophonist Dudu Pukwana, from the multi-racial bop quartet The Blue Notes, becoming major players on the London scene. Both feature on Vol. 3 with McGregor’s majestic version of Kippie Moeketsi’s ‘Switch’ and Pukwana’s swinging ‘Joe’s Jika’ taken from his 1969 debut.

While the government promoted tribal rural music and the idea of a compliant and backward black population, jazz musicians responded by looking to the future and to the pan-African fight taking place from Alabama to Angola. All through this incredible period in South African jazz, the players who stayed behind were forging their own distinct styles that while rejecting tribal clichés mined the region’s rich ancestral music. With all obvious words and messages of resistance censored, the freedom principle of jazz became a vital tool for change. Listen to the urgency of The Jazz Giants towering modal jazz piece ‘Pinese’s Dance’ or The Allen Kwela Octet’s ‘Question Mark’ and you can hear both the anger and humanity of the sixties generation. At the same time it was usual for messages to be hidden in both the music and song titles, sometimes not so subtly such as on The Mankunko Quartet’s 1968 release ‘Yakhal' Inkomo’ referring to the cry of a bull taken to slaughter. You won’t find that township classic here sadly but you will find the group’s glorious ‘Daddy Trane and Wayne Shorter’. Also, included are Philip Tabane’s mighty Malombo whose combination of guitar, flute, and penny whistle is captured here on the soaring soul jazz of ‘Sangoma’.

Next Stop…Soweto Vol 2 

Soultown. R&B, Funk & Psych Sounds from the Townships

Less well documented but brought gloriously to life by Volume 2 of Strut’s brilliant series were the raucous young soul and funk bands that burst out of the townships in the late 60s and early 70s. Just as jazz musicians locked into the pan-African struggle, so an even stronger brand of black consciousness oozed through the organ heavy grooves of the younger generation. Such was the influence of these overlooked bands that, as David Coplan points out: “In this early rock and ‘Soweto Soul’ of the early 70’s, we might sense the expressive roots of the student Soweto Uprising (of 1975) that followed”. While the likes of Coltrane and Archie Shepp inspired jazz players in their pan African struggle, it was artists like Booker T & the MGs and Jimi Hendrix who spoke loudly to the restless young musicians of this underground scene. “We could not relate to mbaqanga because we considered ourselves more literate, educated you know,” Sipho Mabuse of the influential group The Beaters (later renamed Harari) explained to Gwen Ansell. Their desire for change and resistance to stereotyping was reflected in both the urgency of the grooves and their cultish fashion sense (from the dakishi clad hipsters to the Converse-wearing pantsulas whose influence still resounds today) that asserted both self-assertion and modernity. With names like The Flaming Souls and The Monks and some of the heaviest funk grooves you’ve ever heard, these township youths screamed for liberty. Whether through overt lyrics such as on The Heroes’ ‘Come With Me’ (which spoke of re-unification with Africa) or more often in the hidden messages behind the strident funk of tracks like ‘Nkuli’s Shuffle’ by The Kooks, you can taste the impatience for change that would see this new generation rise up and begin the breakdown of this regime. With the World Cup acting as one the most important events in African social history since the end of Apartheid, it’s time to remember those who helped sow the seeds of freedom.

Out now :

Next Stop... Soweto Vol. 1:
Township Sounds From the Golden Age of Mbaqanga

Next Stop ... Soweto Vol. 2:
Soultown. R&B, Funk & Psych Sounds from the Townships 1969-1976

Next Stop… Soweto Vol. 3:
Giants, Ministers & Makers: Jazz in South Africa 1963-1984
is out 21 June 2010 on Strut

Soweto Blues by Gwen Ansell
is published by Continuum

Andy Thomas

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