Legendary African jazz musician Hugh Masekela has died at the age of 78.
&#8220;After a protracted and courageous battle with prostate cancer, he passed peacefully in Johannesburg, South Africa, surrounded by his family,&#8221; read a statement released by his family.
He had been battling cancer since 2008.
Masekela used his music as a political tool, often against apartheid in South Africa, with songs such as Stimela, Soweto Blues and Bring Him Back Home (Nelson Mandela). 
Masekela first started playing the piano when he was five years old.
&#8220;I didn&#8217;t go into it for notoriety or fame. I just went into music because I love it,&#8221; he told FORBES LIFE AFRICA, when he was on the cover in 2014.
At the age of 14, he was given his first trumpet by Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, the late British anti-apartheid activist. Hugh began to develop his signature sound in the late 1950s, melding jazz with African influences.
His first album, Trumpet Africaine, was released in 1963. He went on to release more than 40 albums and performed with Dizzy Gillespie, The Byrds, Fela Kuti, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder and Miriam Makeba.
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Legendary Hugh Masekela Has Died

In the Africa I know, we sing and dance when we are happy, when we go to the battlefield, and in times of bereavement. We did it at the memorial service of 86-year-old South African female jazz trailblazer, Thandiwe ‘Thandi’ Klaasen on a warm January day. She died a week before, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.
Could we have celebrated the colorful and illustrious career of Klaasen without the music and renowned Sophiatown style, the multiracial suburb she lived in until it was cleared away by apartheid?
Born in 1931 in Sophiatown, Klaasen and her contemporaries used music to fight the oppressive system and patriarchy. Tired of being an appendage to male bands, she formed a female vocal quartet called the Quad Sisters that shot to stardom with a hit song Carolina Wam, in 1952. They influenced the formation of younger female groups, including Miriam Makeba’s The Skylarks.
On this Wednesday afternoon at the memorial service at Germiston City Hall, east of Johannesburg, songs intertwined with messages of condolences from politicians, musicians and family. One outstanding tribute was the family band’s adaptation of Louis Armstrong’s hit, What A Wonderful World.
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I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself Mam’ Thandi,
Was a beautiful soul, A great dancer
and entertainer, If you agree just clap
your hands, Say how did you do.
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This classic was followed by words of Lorraine Klaasen, the image of her mother.
“I was a good observer of my mom. When I grew up I wanted to be like my mother, I wanted to travel the world like my mom and make people happy with my music. And I am really living the promise I made to myself… Music made my mom very happy… She travelled with me as artists but she played that role of a mom…,” says Lorraine, a 2013 Juno Award winner for World Music Album of the Year in Canada.
“What I am going to miss about my mother is her big heart and courage to start something and see it to the end. She taught me to trust in God. She was hardly in hospital. She was a very strong woman and a disciplinarian,” adds her son Roger Phambane.
The snazzy great-grandma’s penchant for wine drew chuckles.
Klaasen’s spells of inebriation were rarely boring. A friend and protégé, Abigail Kubeka, told tales of cooking and empty bottles.
“After all, she was a mother, a housewife and everything. She loved cooking her mutton curry for her husband, Lucas. One day she didn’t realize a cloth fell into her pot. So, she dished out for her husband and Lucas was eating with a fork, but the fork couldn’t pick up the meat. He called her: ‘Thandi, what have you cooked? You said you wanted mutton curry, that’s mutton curry. Ja, mutton curry, but this is a dish cloth,’” says Kubeka to raucous laughter.
Klaasen, among other things, was a magician. She would make a wine disappear in a second, says Nandipha Ndlovu, a granddaughter who called her a role model. Ndlovu is a young doctor in Germiston.
All the speakers agreed on Klaasen’s stoicism and resilience, mentioning how she survived the horror of 1977 when someone – maybe a rival – threw acid in her face. She was in hospital for almost a year.
“That day the fire was set to put an end to her rising star, but they were wrong. That was the day she was truly born. Everyone has got their turning point in their lives. We can rather choose to pursue it, chase your dream or you can turn back, or you can fail. But she didn’t choose to fail,” says Ndlovu.
She would tell people ‘they can burn my face, but they can’t burn my voice,’ says Khubeka.
She also used to joke that she never had one wrinkle in her face. Clearly she never lost the love and respect of her family, nor her sense of humor.

They Can Burn My Face, But They Can’t Burn  My Voice

African jazz legend Thandi Klaasen saw and sang through it all; many years of hunger, oppression and an acid bomb thrown into her face.
When she surrendered to life, her memorial drew the finest of the last 50 years – many of whom listened to her rich voice as children.
On a chilly afternoon in Johannesburg, a hall of mourners – musicians, politicians, family and supporters of Klaasen – gathered at the Germiston City Hall, to tell her stories. Strangely, there was not even a single tear. It was a hall filled with clapping and laughter.
There were rows of chairs, in the middle front seated the family wearing white t-shirts with Klaasen’s face printed on them. Baroque floral arrangements flanked the stage, and scores of reporters filled the hallway.
Klaasen died of pancreatic cancer on January 15, at the age of 86 after being admitted to Thelle Mogoerane Hospital in Vosloorus, east of Johannesburg, on December 9, 2016.
To the world, she was known as a music giant with a golden voice, a sense of humor and Tsotsi Taal, a township slang, the language of Sophiatown, where she was born. To her children, she was a mom who loved sharing her stories.
Her daughter Lorraine, also a musician, took to the podium sporting a hat and black and white brogues. The clothes were her mom’s favorite.
She started her five-minute eulogy by greeting the audience: “Sanibonani, dumelang, hoe gaan dit, hoezit?”, a way that Klaasen greeted people.
“My chest is so tight and it’s like somebody put a rope around my throat,” said Lorraine.
“Music made my mom very happy. It was not about how she sang the songs but how the audience reacted.”
Lorraine likened her mom to a rose that looks pretty, but if not watered, wilts and dies.
“Every time my mom visited me in Canada, I took her to schools, senior citizens’ homes and HIV/AIDS foundations; every place where my mom could speak and inspire people I took my mom and so she became alive. But when we came back home, I noticed she was withering away musically.”
It was the end of a story that began in 1931 when the world was in the throes of depression.
Born to a shoemaker father and a domestic worker mother, Klaasen started her career as a teenager, singing in churches for a handful of coins. She decided to become a singer after seeing a jazz group perform at her school.
Not many knew she was also a tap dancer.
Klaasen knew poverty, apartheid and hardship and poured it into her work.
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“I had no chance to say goodbye to romance
I had no time to leave it all behind
It was the place I knew
Where my dreams came true
Until they broke it down
Sophiatown”
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These are the lyrics from her popular song, Sophiatown, narrating a sad tale of how black people were removed from the cosmopolitan suburb of Johannesburg.
In 1977, the star was attacked with an acid bomb that disfigured her face and put her in hospital for a year. It is said that a rival hired thugs to assault the singer; to this day, no one knows who it was.
Klaasen used to say: “They have burned the face but not the voice.”
Sadly, the great voice is no more.
She was also well-known for her role in the international musical, King Kong, by composer Todd Matshikiza singing alongside great voices, such as Dorothy Masuka, Dolly Rathebe and Miriam Makeba.
Fellow musician Don Mattera, leaning on a stick, described Klaasen as a queen who never needed protection.
With a career that spanned over five decades, she has received a string of awards, including: The Woman of Distinction Award, in Canada in 1999, and a Lifetime Achievement Award at the South African Music Awards.
Many said they’ll remember Klaasen for her humor, feisty personality and conviviality.
“She had the special gift of making wine disappear in seconds,” said Nandi Ndlovu, a granddaughter, as the hall erupted in laughter.
Legendary musician Abigail Kubeka said Klaasen was a lady of style.
“I remember when she was still married to her husband, Lucas; she once told me that ‘hey Abi, I once cooked because Lucas had asked for a mutton curry’, and as you know she used to love her wine, so she cooked this mutton and it happened that a dish cloth fell into the pot and she wasn’t aware. So she dished up for the husband, so as he was eating with a fork, he noticed a dish cloth. He then asked ‘Thandi, what have you cooked?’.”
Her response was “Ag man, Lucas jy het gese jy soek mutton curry (no man, Lucas you said you wanted mutton curry)”, and then Lucas said “ja mutton curry maar die is ‘n dish cloth curry die (yes, mutton curry, but this is a dish cloth curry)”.
“Rest in peace, Thandi, and don’t cook mutton cloth or dish curry again,” Kubeka said, before getting back to her seat next to Masuka.
Kubeka described Klaasen as a courageous woman who stood up in the face of the apartheid regime.
“She was so brave you took her to London and she was Thandiwe all the way you like or not. She was never apologetic about who she was,” she said.
Zanele Dlamini, 38, who played a young Klaasen at the Market Theatre, a tribute to jazz legends, performed Sophiatown.
“When I first heard that she passed away I was hurt a lot. Playing mama Klaasen wasn’t easy but she helped me a lot even though she wasn’t fine health-wise. I last saw her in August, but before her death, I used to communicate with Lorraine, who told me she wasn’t talking anymore. I wanted her to see herself in me. Even though she was sick I wasn’t ready for her death,” said Dlamini.
“She lived her life; a life of tragedy and finally she’s in peace,” said Lorraine.
To these musicians, she lives on; her song will never die.

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Farewell To Romance

More than 60 years ago, brutal authorities choked the life and jazz out of a vibrant corner of Africa.
They called it Sophiatown – the Chicago of Africa – a free-wheeling, musical, multiracial community close to the heart of Johannesburg and the birthplace of many an African musician. Too close, according to the apartheid authorities.
“We won’t move!” was written on the walls. Police made sure people did on a February morning in 1955. Before sunrise, they drove out 110 families with nothing but hastily packed belongings. This foreshadowed almost two decades of forced removals of thousands throughout South Africa.
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One of them was 14-year-old Don ‘Bra Don’ Thinane who had grown up with Indian and Chinese neighbors – “a mixed bag” he says. He recalls his father leaving to search for a new home two days before the trucks and bulldozers arrived to take him away. “He knew that in about a day or two days they are going to demolish the place,” says Bra Don, who found himself dumped in Meadowlands, Soweto, with his grandmother and uncle, because of his race.
We go for a drive in search of memories from 60 years ago. Bra Don tells me this was his playground where he used to rollerskate: we are on 5th avenue heading towards Sophiatown. “Hey! Isn’t that Xuma’s place,” he exclaims as we pass the home of the first black South African to become a medical doctor, former ANC President A.B. Xuma. One of few places that survived the nationalist government’s wrecking ball.
We drive on looking for Gerty Street, where Bra Don used to live. I spot the name, barely visible, worn and stencilled in black. We turn right into the street, immediately the mood in the car changes, and so does Bra Don’s face; his eyes widen and light up as nostalgia washes over.
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“I used to scale this wall,” says Bra Don when we get to the barrier that stretches from Gerty into the Melville Koppies, a place where he spent his afternoons, and one of the few things left. “There’s nothing that can show me our house here! They literally broke it down,” he says as we carry on looking for anything familiar.
It was also in Sophiatown that he found the discipline of boxing, under the strict coach Harry Mikela. In playing the trumpet, he learned from the elder brother of Stompie Manana, one of the fathers of African jazz. It helped him escape the rough streets and in 1980, through study, he became a lawyer. Now, at the age of 71, he is one of the best known black advocates in the land.
Bra Don is one of many happy to see Sophiatown back on the map. The apartheid administration renamed it Triomf – meaning triumph in Afrikaans. In 2006, it was rechristened Sophiatown.
The jazz that died under the ugly din of bulldozers, removal trucks and police batons, is also back.
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Back To The  Future In The Streets Of Soul

It is a windy day in Johannesburg, South Africa. Thick dark clouds assemble in the sky; the wind is as swift as rush hour. As we meet, Oliver Mtukudzi carries a brown bag, full of his life, on his shoulder. He carries the bag everywhere, just as he wears his trademark poor boy cap. Dressed in a black jacket and grey pants, he stands high up on the stairs to welcome us. He is in South Africa to promote his 65th album, Eheka! Nhai Yahwe, which features South African jazz legend Hugh Masekela. It’s a remarkable career stretching back some 41 years with songs that have enlivened parties all over the world with hits like Neria, Todii and Wasakara.
“I never decided to be in the music industry. It was in me. My mother said ‘you are a good singer but you will never surpass your birth cry. Your birth cry was so beautiful’. So I believe that’s when I started singing, from my first breath,” says Mtukudzi.
Born in 1952 in Highfield, a suburb in Harare, Zimbabwe, on September 22 at 3AM; music runs in his blood. Both his parents were musicians. They met at a choir competition and the competition never ended. They competed at home and the children were the judges.
“If we needed a favor from dad, then dad won and if we needed a favor from mum, mum won.”
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It wasn’t long before he followed.
“I made a three-string guitar for myself from a tin around 1969 or early 1970s with the help of a [relative]. I was always playing it. My father didn’t like it and he broke the guitar,” he recalls.
It wasn’t going to stop him. He made up songs as a child and sang everywhere.
“One day, I decided to perform for my parents standing on the table and they enjoyed it so much I didn’t get smacked for standing on the table. I remember my mother noticed I had been standing on the table, two or three days later. That’s how good it was,” he chuckles.
Mtukudzi followed his passion. In the 1970s, he joined Wagon Wheels, a band which included yet another Zimbabwean star, Thomas Mapfumo, the man who wrote Nyoka Musango and is known as the king of Chimurenga music.
“I love what I do. If I was doing a career, I would be worried about how much money I can make. I am yet to decide on a career to take on. This is not a career for me. I am just doing me. This is about understanding the purpose of a song, to bring life and hope to the people and to heal broken hearts. If you do it right, there is more in appreciation than getting paid.”
His skill is appreciated from Angola to Zimbabwe. He has won many awards; among them, the National Arts Merit Awards, Zimbabwe Music Awards, KORA Awards and South African Music Awards.
“All my songs are my favorites. If it’s not one of my favorites, I will just throw it away. You won’t get to hear it. It won’t make it to my album. Awards are an appreciation. They shouldn’t put any pressure on me, otherwise I will lose the purpose of the song,” he says.
The deep voice of Mtukudzi has brought music to the next generation. Taught by their father, his children Selmor and Sam Mtukudzi became music stars in their own right.
“One day, in March 2010, I was in Johannesburg and my son, Sam, was supposed to pick me up in Harare at the airport.”
Mtukudzi sent Sam a message telling him he was no longer coming. Unfortunately, the text didn’t go through. Sam drove to the airport to pick him up. And tragedy struck.
“I got a call that evening and they said he had been in an accident on his way home from the airport. They were taking him to the hospital and I was to come as soon as possible. They wouldn’t give me the details,” says Mtukudzi.
When he arrived at the airport all his close friends and family were there.
“I realized something was really wrong. They were all crying and I knew my son had passed on. I couldn’t believe it. My last words with him, we joked and now he was gone. I am still learning to live with it.”
This is a big loss for Mtukudzi. Sam performed and toured with his father.
“He was always on my left side when he was on stage with me. That alone, when I’m on stage, it makes me remember he is not there. Every time I am on stage, I feel the emptiness but it is also therapeutic because I feel him the most when I’m on stage.”
After Sam’s death, it was hard to sing again. In 2012, after two long years of grief, Mtukudzi released Sarawoga – in his mother tongue, it means “left alone”.
“Some of the songs in the album were meant to be in collaboration with my son so this was some kind of therapy for me. I didn’t want to throw away the work we had sweated on. I had to finish it off,” he says.
One of the songs in the album is Shamiso, named after Mtukudzi’s daughter.
“Sam was more of a friend than a son. One of the songs we were working on was Shamiso. She was getting married and we were going to sing the song at her wedding.”
It hasn’t been an easy journey. According to Mtukudzi, for as long as there are people, there is something to talk about and if there is something to talk about, then there is something to sing about.
“My music comes from the people, the environment and some of it from personal experiences. Things come up when I’m driving and I park on the side and write it down, you don’t budget time for a song. This is a tough industry. There are a lot of obstacles but you have to be strong. There is no shortcut, you just have to go all the way and remain true to yourself,” he says.
As Mtukudzi learns to live with the loss of his son, he is trying to break barriers. He is adapting a famous 1961 Zimbabwean book, Pfumo Reropa, spear of blood in chiShona, by Patrick Chakaipa.
“I’m not going to retire. I can’t run away from myself. I noticed that some of our literature is being thrown away. It is being ignored probably because there are no visuals to them, so I felt I should take one of the popular books at home and script it into motion picture to encourage our youngsters to be more interested in African literature.”
Through the loss and the pain, Mtukudzi is trying to build something of substance for Africa out of the ruins. Surely, that is a tribute to the loss of a loved son.

“Every Time I’m  On Stage, I Feel The  Emptiness”

His parents could not understand it. How could you pay the bills by playing a guitar? Also, the idea of loose morals associated with musicians didn’t sit well with young Francis Chris Phiri’s parents. This drove young Phiri, known as Lawi, abbreviated from Nzululwazi – custodian of wisdom in the Ngoni language – to work hard on his dream to become a jazz musician, even though he was banned from visiting friends who played musical instruments by his parents, but encouraged to go to church.
“At first church wasn’t fun but when I realized there were musical instruments there, and there was a chance I could practice with the youth group, church became a hideout and a training ground for me,” he says
The church choir helped develop Lawi; he is now an award-winning artist after being named the Best Acoustic Jazz Artist at the Malawian Music Awards and receiving a nomination at the All Africa Music Awards for Best Male Artist in Southern Africa.
Lawi is among the up-and-coming young jazz artists in Southern Africa and getting recognition across the continent.
“Music is a universal language, this makes it quite easy to communicate with lovers of music anywhere,” says Lawi.
“The African continent is big and for your work to be well received by many is a great achievement.  We have many musicians from Africa, and of African origin, with exceptional talent, skills and experience who work very hard to bring about great African music.”
Lawi remembers his first time in a recording studio; he wished he could relive it every day. That’s the day he fell in love with production. He then started saving for his first computer and tiny speakers to teach himself how to produce.
He recalls having a lot of friends interested in music. They created a network where they shared ideas and the music produced from different recording spaces. They called it sessions.
Lawi says he did not take his music to radio stations, but some of them were playing his songs although he does not know how they got the music.
“I thought that the work was not all that great but people enjoyed it. I can say it has been a long journey of hard work and a constant need to perfect my skills,” he says.
The Malawian artist began work on his first album in 2009 and released it in 2013. He worked from home since he had the liberty to experiment as much as he could, plus he could not afford professional studios that charged by the hour. Despite his struggles, Malawi loved the 17-song album.
One of Lawi’s hit songs is The Whistling Song, which had regular airplay and received a lot of feedback on social media. Lawi loves vocal harmonies that accompany the guitar; leading to some comparing him to Youssou N’Dour and Richard Bona.
“I believe it is fair to say my sound is evolving, just as jazz is. Very few musicians play jazz as one would know it from New Orleans in the 1920s, or even in the style of great musicians as recent as Miles Davis or Herbie Hancock,” he says.
Lawi has an extensive portfolio and has performed among great South African artists like Jimmy Dludlu and Ray Phiri. He never thought he would share the stage with these experienced jazz musicians, whom he looked up to as a youngster; this was a dream come true for him. Maybe it’s the first dream of many.

Music Notes Then Bank Notes

Cape Town’s townships were once referred to as “apartheid’s dumping ground”. Today, 22 years into democracy, the stories usually told of these spaces speak of poverty, rampant crime and socioeconomic marginalization.
But Tony Elvin, the charismatic founder of Ikhaya Le Langa, has a very different view. “When I first discovered Langa, not only was it not what I was told in terms of supposedly being a sad and fearful place,” he says, “It was the place where I found a community still intact. There’s an energy and a spirit that is in Langa, and if we can capture that, it’s like gold.”
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Seated in the café at his headquarters in a repurposed Langa primary school, Elvin uses a detailed and dog-eared map of Cape Town to introduce what his NGO is trying to achieve in Cape Town’s oldest black township.
What the map reveals is surprising and powerful: Langa does not sit on the isolated peripheries of the metropolis where common lore has long positioned it, but right at its pulsing heart.
As a black Londoner living in Langa, Elvin admits that he’s used to surprising people. Before he moved here permanently in 2010, the long-neglected Langa community’s interaction with the rest of the world had been limited to occasional groups of white tourists passing through on a quick “poverty safari”, as Tony disdainfully calls the archetypal township tour, before heading back to their cushy city hotels.
Through the ongoing development of the so-called Langa Quarter, Elvin hopes to emphatically change that trend.
“The aim is to create an aspirational cool place, not just for tourists, to create a new place in Cape Town where Capetonians can also go, not only for a history lesson, but to listen to some great jazz, see some great art, chill out and have a great time. I want the Langa Quarter to be to Cape Town what the French Quarter is to New Orleans,” says Elvin.
The Langa Quarter is the pilot model of a concept that Elvin has dubbed the “Social Enterprise Precinct”. The idea, he says, is to overlay the social enterprise principles of “people, planet and profit” onto particular neighborhoods, and to thereby create “viable, sustainable spaces where investment will flourish, and the poverty will then take care of itself.”
Elvin has considerable experience doing this in Cape Town, having first come here as a social enterprise consultant for celebrity chef Jamie Oliver in 2004. Elvin soon fell in love with the city and went on to set up his own social enterprise consultancy firm in the center of Cape Town, where he came into contact with a number of young township-based social entrepreneurs.
“I became aware that there was a lot more I wanted to do in Cape Town, and particularly in the townships,” says Elvin.
He concedes that he still “wasn’t quite sure” what he was setting out to achieve when he moved from his luxurious Hout Bay residence into the township to start Ikhaya Le Langa.
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“Even today, I sometimes describe it all as being at sea, in the middle of a storm, in a boat that I’m still building, without knowing what shape it will take, and I’m not sure what direction I’m headed in either. It’s still new, this approach.”
But Elvin can already boast a number of successes, including the Langa Quarter Homestay Hotel, where visitors are fed and accommodated in the home of a Langa resident. Since its inception a little over a year ago, this initiative has contributed more than R100,000 (roughly $6,400) to the 15 households currently involved – a considerable amount of money in an area where the majority earn less than R4,000 (roughly $250) a month.
Then there’s the annual, and increasingly well-attended, Uplifting Langa Through Reachable Art (ULTRA) street art event, which this year drew talented artists from across the Langa community and far beyond; world-renowned French street artist Jace stayed in Langa for a week as the event’s artist in residence.
Other fledgling ventures – including a media, graphics and advertising studio, an online shop for local artisans and designers, and a new restaurant – have drawn support from multinational companies, including Amazon and Ikea.
But take a walk with Elvin through the intricate crisscrossing streets of the quarter and it’s evident that he’s not resting on his laurels. He talks incessantly, throwing out countless ideas and plans for improving everything that he passes.
The effusive greetings he receives from the local residents along the way pay testament to the time he has invested in gaining their trust, and ensuring that they will be a central part of every step of this process.
“Above all, I’m focused on how the wonderful, cool transformation of Langa can positively influence the community and what is the opportunity to drive change. Langa deserves to be shown some love.”
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It’s also clear that Elvin feels more than just a philanthropic affinity for Langa.
“I love living in Langa. I’ve got friends here, I love the noise of Langa, I like the people that you walk around and see every day – it’s really very charming. After six years, Langa’s my home.”
With so much still in the pipeline, Elvin is not looking to uproot himself anytime soon.
“The Langa Quarter is far from a finished product, but we are at a stage where we can invite people in and, critically, they can stay,” he says. “So that’s a stake in the ground and we will grow from that, and more and more people will benefit from that. Essentially what we’ve done already is create hope.”

The Londoner Capturing African Spirit And Spinning It Into Gold

Letta Mbulu sings with soul, the soul of Africa.
Born in Soweto where people turned to music and dance to escape the dark days of apartheid in South Africa, her early influences were the songs of hope, joy and determination echoing through the snaking alleys of her township.
As a child, in 1959, she became a part of King Kong, the acclaimed South African jazz-influenced musical, which opened in Johannesburg at the University of the Witwatersrand.
“I learned at a young age what it takes to be a professional artiste and what it takes to develop ideas into a performance,” says Mbulu when we meet her in her Johannesburg home.
South African singing legend Miriam Makeba and jazz musician Thandi Klaasen were part of the cast of King Kong and her mentors throughout the production. While still in her early 20s, her musician-boyfriend and now husband, the hugely-talented Caiphus Semenya, invited her to join him in the United States (US).
Reluctant to travel far from home, she arrived in a cold and snowy America, welcomed by Semenya, Makeba and South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela, living in exile in the US.
“I kept searching for the New York with all the glitz and glamor but I experienced a New York which was very depressing, it was snowing, very cold and I asked ‘when are we getting to New York’?” says Mbulu.
She had left behind a South African summer with family, friends and festivities, and was now confronted by a cold New York. She had to get over it.
“I went to see Ms Makeba [for her performance], Bill Cosby opened for her and I was blown away, which inspired me to perform and we went to the Village Gate to watch Celia Cruz.”
Cruz was her inspiration to perform in her native language, at the famed Village Gate.
“Miles Davis came to give me a compliment after the performance where he asked me if I had taken coke, which I misheard as Colgate; he said things which offended me at the time, but I realized later they were compliments,” says Mbulu now.
Mbulu’s career gathered momentum when John Levy became her manager, and she collaborated with American artistes such as David Axelrod and Cannonball Adderley. Her association with Quincy Jones led to opportunities in featuring in popular soundtracks.
Jones was producer for A&amp;M Records when Mbulu was recording There’s Music In The Air. It was on a trip to West Africa that she received a request from Jones for her song to be included in the movie Roots.
“Roots was a movie about black American history, when I did that song [Oluwa: Many Rains Ago], it came deep from another place, it was wonderful,” she says.
The success of Roots brought more recognition for Mbulu as she followed up with soundtracks for The Colour Purple and A Warm December.
While on a world tour for a performance with Harry Belafonte, actor Sydney Poitier was in the audience. After the show, he asked her to perform one of her songs Bahleli Bonke eTilongweni for A Warm December.
“The song was about apartheid political prisoners, this theme didn’t fit in with a club scene as depicted in the movie,” says Mbulu.
The club scene was a sequence created to allow Poitier’s character to connect with his African love interest. Despite her dissatisfaction with the lack of sensitivity to the subject matter of the song, Mbulu appreciated the opportunity and exposure. Later, Micheal Jackson considered Mbulu for his song Liberian Girl which had a similar theme as A Warm December.
Mbulu recalls being intrigued by the King of Pop.
“Michael had a very tiny voice, was extremely shy; his first words were, ‘Are you from Africa, yes you don’t look African’. I asked him how Africans look,” says Mbulu.
The Western perception of Africa has been a topic of debate for decades and is an issue Mbulu feels can only be changed by Africans.
“African artistry becomes limited to build bridges between melodies which take music to the next level, it’s important to go to school to free yourself as an artiste,” she says.
She emphasizes the importance of education to develop talent.
“In South Africa, we learn classical music that’s great, however it limits us in terms of African instruments which have notes which can’t be written in our contemporary musical education.”
Mbulu laments the disinterest of the government in innovating arts and culture education, and aligning it with the economy.
“When we talk to our leaders, they hear it, but can’t see it. They say people are already dancing so what’s the point, not seeing that it could be sustaining.”
Mbulu and Semenya returned to South Africa in 1991 after being in exile for over two decades. She continues to produce music, is working on an album and says she couldn’t have asked for more.
“I have a good husband, grandkids that I adore; my life is good, I thank my creator, my ancestors and my people,” she humbly submits, as she awaits a warm December in South Africa.

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There’s Nostalgia In The Air

It was in 1966 in Dahomey, old Benin. A little girl is standing under the glare of heavy spotlights at the Palais des Congrès de Cotonou, the majestic parliament building in the heart of the tiny West African country’s largest city.
She is only six and her slender legs sway and shake. Moments earlier, her mother, the theatre company director, had hurried her on to the stage. Her daughter was the only one who could fit into the sick soloist’s costume.
On stage, still shaking, the little girl forces the audience into laughter – they think it’s part of the program. She reads this as approval, she is the comedienne at home, and finds the courage to begin the song Atcha Houn. Her audience responds with shock and awe, the first of many apt reactions Angélique Kidjo’s voice would receive in her long and illustrious career.
Today, the 54-year-old songstress is radiant with confidence. After the death of her father, a photographer with progressive ideas, she began to return to her memories of the days before her award-winning music career. The memories, put to paper, became her seminal autobiography, Spirit Rising, released early last year. She  remembers her childhood as particularly happy and adventurous.
“I was a little girl, always running and jumping around our courtyard on skinny legs,” she says.
Kidjo grew up with music all around her. Her mother’s first love, traditional Beninoise musical theatre, ended when she was nine. However, soon after, the family took on another musical project investing in a number of Western style musical instruments in an ambitious plan to groom their seven sons into a homegrown version of the Jackson 5.
She, brimming with curiosity, wanted to be a part of this new sound.
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“After school instead of homework, I would stand in front of the kick-drum with my arms crossed and listen in awe as they rehearsed Get Ready by the Temptations in our little lounge.”
Soon, she was joining her brothers performing at a little bungalow bar on the Cotonou lagoon while still a schoolgirl. Her father would only let her perform two songs but it was something Kidjo looked forward to each time.
“Around midnight, my father would come to my bedroom I shared with my sister Mireille, to wake me. I was too excited to sleep, but I would pretend, holding my songbook and lying very still so I wouldn’t wrinkle my dress. I wore the same purple dress every time. My mother made it from fabric she used to sell&#8230;my father put his hand on my shoulder and gently shook me, telling me it was time to go.”
Decades passed, and Kidjo’s passion for music and performance did not wane. Instead, it took her to the bustling streets of Paris. Speaking to FORBES WOMAN AFRICA on the phone from London, Kidjo says that she was unwilling to compromise as an artist if she chose to stay in her country.
“In Benin, before the coup d’etat, it was a very easy-going country&#8230;and then the communist regime arrived and everything changed. The good teachers fled the country and education began decaying and music was hit because it was not possible to write your own music if you weren’t talking about the communist regime and the people in power. It was one thing I didn’t want to do. So the only option I had was to leave, otherwise I was going to end up in jail.”
On September 11, 1983, a 23-year-old Kidjo arrived in France. It was a chilly introduction to the odd European climate.
“I learned very quickly that when the sun is shining in Europe, it doesn’t mean heat like in Africa, sometimes the sun is out and you freeze your butt, for real!” she laughs about those early days in Paris.
Those days, unlike her childhood, were a challenge. She was living with her older brother, who was also a student in the city. Both of them had very little to survive and she often did odd jobs to make ends meet. But Kidjo says her mind was made up, she was going to be the musician she wanted to be on her own terms at all costs.
“It was not easy&#8230;my parents were not rich enough to send us money. It was very hard, I had to find work. I did babysitting, I did hotel room cleaning, I did hair-braiding, I was a back-up singer in a band. It was a matter of survival but I was free and that freedom had no price for me. As long as the work didn’t compromise my body or my brain, I didn’t mind working endless hours&#8230;”
The life of a musician came easily to her. She worked endless hours to make tuition to the prestigious Parisian jazz school, CIM. It was 1985 and she had just left a fledgling singing school in a hilly suburb of the city. The jazz school was in the 18th arrondissement and home to a burgeoning immigrant population. She took to learning, in earnest, the genre that would form the basis of the sound she is now famous for.
“I loved jazz because it helped me understand the connections between classical music, pop and African rhythms. I studied the way the musical notes flowed together,” she says.
Through a series of connections, Kidjo was introduced to Jasper van’t Hof, a celebrated Dutch pianist who was experimenting with traditional African beats. She joined his band Pili Pili soon after as a vocalist.
“Pili Pili was modern jazz with African lyrics and rhythms, and Jasper was a genius at improvisation&#8230;later on this music also had a great influence on my own jazz rhythms&#8230;the sound can be so complex and entrancing. It was my first glimpse of how to create something new out of the magic of traditional African music.”
Her time with van’t Hof’s band was a crucial step in her career. With them, she performed at the renowned Montreux Jazz Festival and often spent winters touring Germany where the band had a prominent following.
While still at CIM, Kidjo met her husband, jazz bassist Jean Hébrail. Together they composed a majority of her repertoire. As she grew more popular in the Parisian jazz circles, she met another key character in her history, a blue-eyed man named Chris Blackwell. She met him at the Island Records office in Paris.
“He was dressed very simply, just in a casual shirt, jeans, and sandals. If you passed him on the street, you would have no idea how rich and powerful he was.”
Blackwell gave Kidjo her big break in 1991, the record deal she had been working towards since she had landed, young and naive, from her home in Benin. She remembers having one stern condition.
“I told him, ‘I need to have the artistic freedom to sing what I want to sing and make the music I want to make’.”
Blackwell was true to his word. In 1992, her first mainstream album Logozo went to number one on the Billboard World Music Charts. She headlined at the Olympia Hall in Paris that year to rave reviews.
She recorded four more albums with Island Records, gaining her first Grammy award nomination in 1995 for the hit single, Agolo.
Two decades later, the determined girl from Benin has made her dreams happen and more. The Grammy award-winner is mother to a daughter currently at Yale University in Connecticut. At the same time, she is a UN Goodwill Ambassador, fighting for the rights of women of her continent.
Her heart remains rooted on African soil as her latest release, Eve, dedicated to the women of Africa, shows. Outside her music, Kidjo is also known for her cooking. Her book was initially imagined as a cookbook and she shares a few of her favorite recipes in the epilogue of her memoirs.
Despite her success, she still holds her beliefs on making it in the music business dear. Compromising on her artistic freedom is something she cannot fathom.
“One thing I learned as a young girl singing was always to be true to my inspiration, never ever give that up in order to please other people. If you cannot sing your song alone without instrumentation and be happy, don’t put it out there! You cannot be an artist thinking that you want to be somebody else. You need to know what kind of artist you want to be and why you want to be that,” she says.
Judging from the sheer scope and success of her career, these are words from the truly wise.

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Once Upon A Legend

Two days before last year’s Grammy Awards, the prolific South African jazz musician and activist, Hugh Masekela, arrived in Los Angeles. He had been nominated in the ‘Best World Music Album’ category for Jabulani, a collection of South African wedding songs, some of which are more than a century old.
Although it was the second Grammy nomination of his long career—his song Grazing in the Grass was up for best contemporary pop instrumental in 1969—Masekela didn’t seem too preoccupied with the possibility of winning.
“Awards are not really my thing,” he says with a shrug.
At the time, the 75-year-old artist was content to catch up with his son Sal Masekela, who is best known as a TV host for ESPN’s X Games coverage and the E! Entertainment celebrity gossip show, The Daily 10.
Sal’s latest endeavor was an album of his own, The Sound of Alekesam, a blend of hip-hop, jazz and R&amp;B that wafts over the speakers at his production company office, where he and his father had just completed their first ever photo shoot together.
“The album sounds good, Selema,” Hugh says, slapping his son on the back and calling him by his full name, as he always does.
It’s no small compliment from a musician who has released more than 40 albums and performed with Dizzy Gillespie, The Byrds, Fela Kuti, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder and Miriam Makeba.
Sal smiles sheepishly and says, “Thanks, man.”
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Sal is 42, and over the course of their relationship there has at times been distance between the two men, both physical and emotional. It was not always easy having a father who was constantly touring, who lived in exile from his homeland for 30 years while speaking out against South Africa’s apartheid, or who once struggled with substance addiction. But their bond is a strong one.
“The great thing about my relationship with my dad is that we’ve always been able to pick up where we left off. We’re two guys running on one track with a baton, and we’ve each sometimes had to go in different ways, but we’re there to hand it to each other,” says Sal.
Today, both father and son find themselves looking forward, while also embracing their roots.
Hugh is committed to restoring African heritage. Born in the town of Witbank, east of Johannesburg, he has always drawn inspiration from the music of his country.
“The music I make, I don’t call it my music. It is based on my township and indigenous rural roots in South Africa. That’s what brought me fame all over the world,” he says.
Hugh first started playing the piano when he was five years old.
“I didn’t go into it for notoriety or fame. I just went into music because I love it,” he says.
At the age of 14, he was given his first trumpet by Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, the late British anti-apartheid activist. Hugh began to develop his signature sound in the late 1950s, melding jazz with African influences.
He left South Africa in 1960, aged 21, beginning a 30-year exile. Settling in New York during a golden age of jazz, he attended the Manhattan School of Music and watched legends like Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Louis Armstrong firsthand. His first album, Trumpet Africaine, was released in 1963.
In the ensuing decades, Hugh became an international star and an outspoken political voice with songs such as Stimela, Soweto Blues and Bring Him Back Home (Nelson Mandela), which became an anti-apartheid anthem.
Sal was born in 1971 and, like his father, grew up immersed in music.
“My earliest memories of my father are being with him in jazz clubs. Hanging out in studios and being around music and around artists that talked about the world,” he says.
As Hugh divided his time between the United States (US) and Africa, living in Zaire, Liberia and Nigeria, Sal was raised by his mother, Jessie Lapierre, a Haitian immigrant, and his stepfather, Manny Gonzalez.
“I’m a unique first-generation American. I borrow from all of it. I’m lucky in that I get to take the influences and the principles of my different cultures and shape them into who I am as a person,” says Sal.
As a young man, Sal marched to the beat of his own drum. Upon moving from New York to California in 1988, he took up surfing, which sparked his love of action sports. One of the tracks on his album alludes to his individualistic nature and his love of the ocean, as he sings: “I’m a black cowboy riding a dolphin”.
In 1990, after the release of Nelson Mandela, Sal joined his father on his homecoming tour in South Africa.
“It was really crazy. While Mandela had been released, apartheid itself was having a very hard time breaking down. I think people were starting to see that it was going to take a long time to put this car in reverse. There was a lot of violence and it was a tense time,” says Sal.
“It was very fulfilling for me to be able to bring him home and for him to see the other side of his heritage,” Hugh says.
In 2010, the two traveled throughout South Africa during the Fifa World Cup for ESPN’s 10-part video series titled ‘Umlando—Through My Father’s Eyes’.
“I took him to the poorest places in the country, to see the other side of it, and also the beauty of the country. It was just wonderful to watch him take it all in,” says Hugh.
For Sal, it was a different South Africa than the one he had visited previously.
“You could pull up at a red light and there’d be a car full of white people at the red light next to your car, and they might wave to you or smile. That might sound minute but the texture of the way people dealt with each other was different—especially among the younger generation,” he says.
The experience gave him immense hope for what the next 20 or 30 years could be like in South Africa.
When it comes to their own futures and those of Africa, Hugh and Sal are both ambitious and optimistic.
In the past year, Hugh has been busy performing in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the US, Canada, Europe and throughout Africa. He also spent five weeks in Trinidad and Tobago working on an album with Siparia Deltones, a steel band. The album is expected this year on Hugh’s record label, House of Masekela.
Sal has been equally busy covering surfing and mountain biking, writing new songs, and developing Art of Craft, a line of limited-edition T-shirts. The shirts are created in collaboration with artisans and a portion of the proceeds is donated to a charity of each subject’s choosing. Hugh was the first artist to be featured.
Sal was due to return to South Africa in March to ride in the Cape Epic, an 800-kilometer mountain bike. He also had plans to work with the South African surfer Jordy Smith, a good friend who does charity work in Durban to promote the sport to youth.
“I’ve always said that the first surfer of color that will have a real shot at the World Tour is going to come from South Africa,” Sal says during a recent phone call.
His optimism echoed that of his father during their earlier conversation before the Grammys.
“There is no society that has as much diversity and wealth and a reservoir of music and other things than Africa. We’re looking at Africa in its embryonic stage as far as I’m concerned,” says Hugh.
Hugh did not win the Grammy but when you are a legend, who cares?   FL

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Strong and Together in Song

It was a surreal night of luxury, to the clink of expensive glasses and the strains of jazz, high on Northcliff Hill overlooking Johannesburg. The valley below spreads out like a carpet of twinkling lights, cooled by a cutting wind from the west. On this night the news on the television is grave; it speaks of hungrier times, strikes and inflation.
At the top of the hill, these fears are far from the thoughts of the diners, who each paid $3,000 to sip on the finest and most expensive wines in the world. Around the table, millionaires chat of bouquet and burgundy. Hands, adorned with sparkling diamond rings, swirl balloons of wine. This is The White Club.
<div id="attachment_1941" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1941" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-medium wp-image-1941" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/586-5-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />The White Club, Northcliff, Johannesburg; 23 May 2013 &#8211; Photo by Brett Eloff</div>
It took inspiration from the London-based Whites, a club created by Francesco Bianco in 1693. It was at his house, which was later painted white, that members indulged in chocolate and bought tickets to the King’s and Royal Drury Lane Theaters. In 1773, The White Club became a place where wealthy men conversed over cigars and fine wine.
In 2009, René Dehn, founder of Gratis Denmark, stepped down as CEO, and took the idea on the road. Now, the Dane travels around the globe, accompanying his well-aged companions. Among them: a 1959 Dom Pérignon Rosé and a 1959 Château Lafite. The uncorking of the bottles always poses a challenge.
“It’s the only little part of the job that I don’t like. You’re a little bit excited but at the same time you are nervous… I’ve gotten over the fact that it feels like I am killing the bottle.”
It’s not easy moving vintage wine around the world. The bottles must be packaged in temperature-controlled cases that are shock absorbent to prevent damage.
For those who wish to join, there is only one way in.
<div id="attachment_1942" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1942" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-medium wp-image-1942" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/586-61-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />The White Club, Northcliff, Johannesburg; 23 May 2013 &#8211; Photo by Brett Eloff</div>
“You cannot buy your way into the club; it’s strictly by invite only. You have to attend one of the smaller dinners around the world in order to be considered for member status,” he says.
The qualities that make for the perfect White Club member include: the ability to be a good dinner partner, who is comfortable and easy going and, above all, willing to share. It’s about creating a sense of community, based on one common bond: the love of expensive wine.
“There was a South African member who missed a dinner in Switzerland. He sent a bottle from his private collection to the people around the table, for them to enjoy… that is the mindset and thinking of sharing that gives me a high.”
In May, The White Club made its third visit to the African continent, bringing along some of the most sought-after and rarest wines in the world. The star of the night was a $24,000 bottle of Château Pétrus, from 1947.
Two teams, each consisting of a wine sommelier and a renowned chef, competed for the best wine-dish pairing.
“I’ve done a springbok fillet, which is wrapped in slightly smoked springbok, served on a bed of butternut rösti… I’m serving it with a piece of foie gras, so it’s going to be something very classic, something very French,” says Coco Reinharz, a French chef from Sel et Poivre restaurant, in Sandton.
<div id="attachment_1946" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1946" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-medium wp-image-1946" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/586-129-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />The White Club, Northcliff, Johannesburg; 23 May 2013 &#8211; Photo by Brett Eloff</div>
Dehn believes that everyone wants to belong to an elite social club and that Africa is the right place, right now.
“It happens in countries where you have a new merging culture of being wealthy, where people have an idea of things they want to spend on.”
In this world of recession, how do White Club members keep to their luxurious pastime?
“In the level that we are doing it, recession doesn’t mean anything. There is always a percentage of people that are above the recession,” says Dehn.
On this night, hard times were far from the minds of the people who had the money to dine like kings and queens on the top of a hill, in the middle of Johannesburg.

Wine At $6,000 A Glass

He grew up in a world where doing business was a foreign concept and capitalism a dirty word. This was the world of Mozambique in the 70s and 80s where Moreira Chonguica’s worldview was formed by the regime of socialist-communist leader Samora Machel, who favored state-owned corporations over the private sector.
“The word business did not apply to me because of the context I grew up in. I never thought about business,” says Chonguica, 35, when thinking back to his youth.
So when he started playing the saxophone as a teenager, it was meant to be a hobby, not a career. It took him many years until he realized that he could make a decent living from his passion. Today, he is actively marketing himself as a brand, by associating with big corporations like Woolworths and Vodacom.
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Chonguica always felt at home in the world of jazz. Every afternoon after school, almost religiously, he visited the local library to browse through leading jazz magazines like Downbeat and Jazz Times, learning about the international world of music. He came to know about festivals, master classes, the music business and the evolution of sound technology.
“I thought, ‘Hello, there is something here that I am missing.’ I started questioning myself and I understood, ‘Ah, music is a business!’” he recalls.
Reading musicians’ biographies became his obsession. Chonguica wanted to find out all he possibly could about the person behind the voice, the business behind the musician.
“From watching music videos on TV, I always thought being a musician was just fun. But when I started reading about the successful artists of that time, like Bryan Adams, Sting, Michael Jackson, MC Hammer, Run-D.M.C., Vanilla Ice. It dawned on me that they are musicians, but they are also companies,” he says.
That’s what he wanted to achieve, as well, one day, he thought.
Chonguica did not only look behind the scenes of music. He also studied the careers of famous sportsmen like basketball star Michael Jordan and the business success stories of multinational corporations like fast food chain McDonalds.
“Michael Jordan created a fingerprint, an identity, a lifestyle. I understood that it’s not only about your success as a sportsman. It’s the way you talk, the way you dress, what you drink, with whom you collaborate. My perspective had changed completely. I started looking at music the same way as at sport,” he explains.
One day the penny dropped: he had to turn himself into a trademark.
But until then, Chonguica had a long road ahead. How was he going to grow his fledgling music career into a thriving business? Step one, was to leave poverty-stricken Mozambique, which had just emerged from more than two decades of bloody internal conflict. He enrolled as a music student at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa in 1997. Living for the first time in a market-driven economy, Chonguica woke up to a sobering reality: combining his dream of being a jazz artist with making money would be extremely difficult.
“I suddenly realized that it would have made much more sense to study economics or engineering or architecture. I got a fright. I thought I have no future. I didn’t want to be just another poor musician.”
In a panic, he played with the thought of de-registering from his studies. It was a drastic decision for someone whose relationship with music had begun early on in his life, pretty much before he could walk or talk. His father, a medical doctor who ran the national health ministry’s pharmacy department, was an ardent music lover. The turntable in the family’s living room in Maputo’s Polana neighborhood hardly stood still.
“My father had a huge collection of LPs. Miles Davis, Fela Kuti, Johnny Clegg, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, James Brown, Pink Floyd, the Police and lots of instrumental jazz. Every evening when he came home from work, he put the system on loud,” says Chonguica.
Chonguica, the boy, listened, and his devotion to music grew. He soon attended a state-subsidized music school where he was introduced to the saxophone—an instrument he never put down again. It was this deep-seated relationship with music that made him years later, as a student, change his mind once again.
“I realized that a musician is who I am. I decided that I have to make it work. I have to change the game. I cannot just play saxophone, I have to turn it into a business.”
And so he graduated with a degree in jazz performance and ethnomusicology and started to play and tour with top South African jazz artists, such as Jimmy Dludlu and Alvin Dyers.
“I purposefully attached myself to the big names, toured with them and played at the top jazz festivals in the world,” says Chonguica.
“It’s like when you’re a soccer player, you want to play with Real Madrid,” he says in reference to the Spanish football club, one of the top performing clubs in the world.
A trip to the United States in 2000 opened his eyes to the world of music even further.
“I saw musicians making a lot of money, getting the right publicity, becoming famous. It was ‘wow’. My perspective of how the music business works totally changed,” he says.
His role model became Quincy Jones, who over five decades in the entertainment industry not only excelled as a jazz trumpeter and performer but became one of the top record producers of all time, working with pop icons like Michael Jackson.
“Quincy Jones is my hero because he shaped and changed the world with music. He built an empire,” says Chonguica.
Back in South Africa, Chonguica changed tack. He didn’t want to be a member of someone else’s band anymore. He wanted to become an artist in his own right, build his own brand. He teamed up with Woolworths and was a celebrity model for the retailer’s winter men’s collection. He became a brand ambassador for Laurentina Premium, an SABMiller beer, Vodacom Mozambique and Mozambican airline LAM, and has collaborated with Nokia, J&amp;B and Mozambique’s largest commercial bank BCI.
“I am marketing myself differently [from other jazz artists]. I am creating concepts of myself, buzz words. Someone will say ‘I know that guy. I want to book him’,” he explains.
He also created an independent recording label, Morestar Entertainment, and produced several albums of conceptual African fusion of jazz, cleverly keeping tabs on his musical output as well as his earnings: “I own everything I do.” Three South Africa Music Awards (SAMA) and another two nominations later, Chonguica’s records can be downloaded from all major music websites, like iTunes, SoundCloud or ReverbNation, giving Chonguica a global presence.
But it’s the branding that has kept Chonguica financially afloat much more than income generated from performances or music sales, especially since the global financial crisis hit in 2008.
“The first thing that’s affected in an economic downturn is entertainment. There are less jazz festivals, reduced budgets for musicians. I came to the conclusion that I can’t depend on festivals and gigs to make money. It’s not sustainable,” he says.
Chonguica’s advice to young musicians: Create our own concepts. Brand your band, young man.

Brand Your Band,  Young Man

One of the sweetest sounds of reconciliation in a troubled land could soon fade.
Eighty-four teenagers, from all walks of life, with one common denominator: a love for music. This is the South African Youth Choir (SAYC), made up of youngsters between the ages of 13 and 18 who embody the rainbow nation through song. Most of them come from disadvantaged backgrounds, most have little but their voices—all sing in harmony with choristers of all creeds and color.
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“These children make Madiba’s dream a reality,” says SAYC events coordinator Anél King, using former president Nelson Mandela’s clan name, the man whose vision it was to create a peaceful, multi-cultural, non-racist South Africa. In many ways, this choir is that.
Since its launch in 2004, SAYC’s musical director, André van der Merwe, has been touring the country every October in search of new talent, visiting cities, small towns, townships and villages. Competition is tough. From several hundred teenagers who audition, between 20 and 25 are selected.
“I look for a good voice and good ears, but also for personality, charisma, energy and resilience,” Van der Merwe says.
At a recent concert in Cape Town, Van der Merwe told the audience: “This is the real South Africa, not the one you read about in the papers.”
Most choir members come to live in a hostel in Durbanville, 25 kilometers outside of Cape Town, where they receive not only musical education—training in pop, rock, jazz and classical music—but also free accommodation, meals and tuition at the nearby high school.
“It’s much more than a choral group. It’s an upliftment program for disadvantaged youth,” say Cecile and James Horne, a retired teacher couple who run the hostel and see themselves as the ‘parents of the choir’.
“We practically offer them a new life.”
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The teenagers confirm this. “Being in the choir has opened a whole new world to me. For the first time in my life, I feel I have options,” says Teboho Mashiya, a 15-year-old chorister who grew up in rural Phuthaditjhaba in South Africa’s Free State.
Mashiya and his peers belong to what South Africans like to call the “free generation”: those born after apartheid. But as the country’s democracy comes of age, South Africa’s youth continue to face a difficult future due to poor education, high unemployment and persistent poverty combined with the slow recovery of the economy from the global financial crisis.
The SAYC wants to be a place where talented youths find hope and opportunity.
“We teach them tolerance and social skills so that they become responsible, confident, well-balanced young adults,” says James Horne.
The recipe seems to work: since its inception eight years ago, all choir members have passed their high school exams, most with good enough grades to secure a university bursary. Many have moved on to careers in music, human sciences or business.
But for the current SAYC members, the dream of a better future might get a rude awakening. A streak of bad luck with sponsors, worsened by the economic downturn, has seen the choral group run out of funds. The first sponsor was the ill-fated financial management firm, Fidentia, which folded in 2007. For almost a year, the choir lived on a shoestring budget, surviving on once-off donations from individuals and small businesses.
The situation brightened at the end of that year when a Cape Town firm, Steeledale Reinforcing, came to the choir’s aid, sponsoring a year’s costs and a trip to Canada’s Kathaumixw Choral Competition, where the SAYC won first place in several categories. A year later, national oil company PetroSA took over, funding the group for another three years. But since then, money has dried up and the SAYC faces closure.
“After PetroSA didn’t renew funding, it’s been bleak. We have applied to other institutions, but so far, nothing has come through,” says SAYC chair André de la Harpe.
“Our coffers are empty. Soon we will have to close down. It’s a harsh reality that would destroy the children’s future.”
The choir, which has performed with singers like Katherine Jenkins and Sibongile Khumalo, is trying to make money by offering lessons in piano, voice and music theory as well as regular concert performances and CD sales. But income from these efforts is a drop in the ocean, says De la Harpe. Basic running costs are pegged at about half a million dollars or $580 per month per child. Ensuring long-term sustainability over four years at full budget would require $4 million.
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Until now, the commitment from those involved with the choir has been remarkable. The entire staff—from the conductor to the hostel parents, cooks and cleaners—has been working without pay since the beginning of March. Rent for the hostel is in arrears. So are school fees. As the rumor of the choir’s potential closure spread through the hostel, the children went into shock, says Cecile Horne.
“It’s like a sword hanging over their heads,” she says.
Tears well in the eyes of Chanté Petersen, who joined the choir in Grade 8 and will graduate from high school this year. The 18-year-old, whose parents are unemployed, knows only too well that her chances of making it out of Elsies River, the poverty-stricken, crime-ridden township she grew up in, are slim if she returns without a matric certificate.
“The choir means everything to me,” she says.
For others, like 17-year-old Daniel Meaker from Pretoria, the future doesn’t look much brighter. “Money is pretty tight at home. I am very worried about the choir disbanding. I don’t know what I’d do,” he says.
For now, all will sing for their supper.

Tag: jazz

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