Feya faku biography of michael jackson
~ sisgwen ~
Thirty years ago today, on 30 June 1990, Walmer Township-born reedman and composer Mtutuzeli Dudu Pukwana died in London. He was only 51 years old.
I was fortunate to know Dudu in the late 1960s and 1970s, in Oxford, where he and the late trumpeter Mongezi Feza were regular and loved guests of our university jazz society, and later in London. There, South African friends in music, and neighbours, formed a supportive and welcoming community, making massive contributions to the city’s cultural landscape – and creating some of the most memorable music nights at the 100 Club on Oxford Street.
Too few of Dudu’s own words about his life and music in exile survive. He wasn’t a big talker: when asked – even in relaxed social situations – “What do you think about…?” he would often respond “It’s in my music…just listen to my music.”
Into that absence and silence intrude the interpretations of others. One example is the liner notes for a just-released album from Matsuli Music: Dudu Phukwana and the ‘Spears’https://matsulimusic.bandcamp.com/album/dudu-phukwana-and-the-spears, a welcome reissue of rare tracks laid down in the late 1960s. Meticulously compiled by collector and music journalist Richard Haslop, those notes reconstruct, from interview reminiscences, producer Joe Boyd’s narrative of the recording sessions. (For more on the album, see https://www.newframe.com/review-dudu-pukwana-and-the-spears/ )
That narrative is necessary background, and the recordings are unarguably essential (and often beautiful) listening. But when it’s about somebody you knew, you get pulled up short by what isn’t in the story: the missing context some listeners may need to make sense of the lives of exiled South African musicians in London.
What pulled me up short was a passage where Boyd expresses his recurring regret about being unable “to get some decent solos out of Dudu” to complete one session, because of the saxophonist’s heavy dr Grammy, Emmy and Platinum Award winning Pianist, Conductor, Music Director, Arranger/Orchestrator LEE MUSIKER has established a distinguished and multifaceted career as both soloist and collaborator in the Classical, Operatic, Broadway, Jazz and Pop music genres. A Steinway Artist, Lee Musiker has performed with the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera, Mostly Mozart, American Symphony Orchestra, Orpheus, New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, the Atlanta, Cleveland, Philadelphia, San Francisco and London Symphony Orchestras, the New York, Boston, Cincinnati and Philly Pops and Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. Lee was a guest on NPR’s Marian McPartland’s “Piano Jazz”, Judy Carmichael’s “Jazz Inspired”, and featured in Steinway and Keyboard magazines. From 2001-2013 Lee was Music Director/Pianist for the legendary Tony Bennett- recordings include the award-winning albums “Duets & Duets 2”, Tony Bennett/Lady Gaga “Cheek to Cheek” and their triumphant 2021 Radio City Music Hall concerts and CBS-TV special. Lee Musiker has collaborated with this platinum roster of artists; Classical: Joshua Bell, Kathleen Battle, Harolyn Blackwell, Stephanie Blythe, Andrea Bocelli, Renée Fleming, Susan Graham, Denyce Graves, Josh Groban, Nathan Gunn, Marilyn Horne, Sylvia McNair, Julia Migenes, Dawn Upshaw, Deborah Voigt. Jazz/Pop: Tony Bennett, Michael Bublé, Natalie Cole, Judy Collins, Michael Feinstein, Aretha Franklin, Lady Gaga, Michael Jackson, Jewel, Billy Joel, Elton John, Norah Jones, Diana Krall, kd Lang, Seth MacFarlane, Manhattan Transfer, John Mayer, Paul McCartney, Sting, Barbra Streisand, James Taylor, Mel Tormé, George Benson, Chris Botti, Eddie Daniels, Wynton Marsalis, John Pizzarelli, Buddy Rich, Doc Severinson. Broadway: Kristin Chenoweth, Barbara Cook, Sutton Foster, Joel Grey, Leslie Odom Jr., Kelli O’Hara, Audra McDonald, Maureen McGovern, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Rita Mo South Africans tend to think of this country as the continental hub for jazz – even though we should have abandoned that illusion a long time ago. Formidable jazz players have emerged all over Africa, from veteran the late Manu Dibango (Cameroon) as early as the 1960s, to today’s Benin-born guitarist Lionel Loueke – more about him later – Mozambican reedman Moreira Chonguiça and more. It’s problems with touring costs and music distribution that rob us of knowledge of Africa-continental jazz artists, not the fact that they don’t exist. We might not have known about Kenyan pianist Aaron Rimbui either, if he hadn’t played an astonishingly beautiful gig at the Orbit back in 2016. That would have been our loss. Now US-based, Rimbui’s fifth album, Imani (https://aaronrimbui.bandcamp.com/album/imani), launched last Friday 25 October, another product of the Africarise/Ropeadope partnership. But his relationship with music goes back much further than that. Harun Kimathi Rimbui was born in Nairobi in 1979. His music-loving father took his kids to hear live popular music wherever they could access it; the family’s religious faith was expressed in churches where good musicians played as well as prayed. Growing up, the young Rimbui was exposed to all the sounds of East African pop, from benga to “Swahili jive” to Congolese-influenced rhumba, to taarab, to international reggae, rock and soul and local bands creating imaginative mashups from all of these (See: https://wakilisha.africa/from-benga-to-gengetone-a-history-of-kenyan-music/). Rimbui started his first youthful musical explorations as a drummer, though he attended a high school that already had a strong piano tradition. He recalls being intrigued, even then, by what the skilled pianists at his church could do. But in his mid-teens everything nearly came to an end, when he was caught in a near-fatal house fire. His face, body and hands all require For many, Jazz from South Africa is associated with the sound of the Exiles, of those faced with a system they could not change, who sought freedom of expression away from their country of birth. Now there are new sounds, varied and exciting, none more so than Nduduzo Makhathini, who has given us a huge wealth of music in a short space of time. We asked Andy Hazell to talk with Nduduzo so that we could start to understand his creativity and direction. Here are their words… Photo: Courtesy Simphiwe Mhlambi AH: I understand that jazz came in to your life whilst studying piano at university. Can you talk about your musical influences up to that point? Nduduzo Makhathini: Music has always been an integral part of my being. I am told that even as a kid I took long to start speaking, but any word that was sung to me I could sing back immediately so my early childhood development was filled with melodies. I also come from a very musical family, society and environment, my dad was a beautiful guitarist and my mom a keyboardist. They were also churches everywhere, traditional ceremonies and different kinds of rituals that carried different repertoires of indigenous music, the Zulu people as a tribe are a very musical people with lots of different music genres from a cappella to drumming and traditional guitar music. But just the environment too is very musical, especially when you go to the more rural side of KwaZulu Natal where you can still hear birds sing, tree humming and the sound of flowing streams, so I am basically influenced by all of this. AH: What was it about Jazz in particular that struck a chord? Nduduzo Makhathini: In jazz I am mostly fascinated by the aspect of improvisation, the idea of a new world all the time. I love the fact that it allows me to define and redefine myself, I l Artists
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