Mick Raubenheimer
JAZZ is not dead. “It just smells funny,” was Frank Zappa’s typically dubious response to a claim that has circled in the circles of jazz since at least the American 50s. “Jazz is dead,” they proclaimed when Gillespie and Bird erupted solos into dangerous foregrounds and the elegant structures of song became ill lit ghosts melting away outback. “Jazz is dead!” They snarled when Betty Mabry whispered electricity into Miles’ compositions. “Jazz is dead mom,” I opined when I first heard Fourplay.
It is a curious phrase – steeped in brashness, but also philosophically intriguing. Many key players have been irritated enough by the baggage and unfortunate origin of the term jazz to distance themselves from it. Zim Ngqawana, one of our most profound jazz gurus, insisted that he just plays music. Ask any of SA’s frenetically questing and dynamic new guard of improvised music how they feel about the term and, for the most part, they’ll just smile mischievously and ask for the next question. Ask Louis Moholo what it feels like to be a globally esteemed jazz drummer and he might just ‘moer’ you.
Moholo is appearing at Straight No Chaser this coming Friday and Saturday in a new incarnation of his rotating Four Blokes ensemble.
The gigs are long sold out, and will in all probability be referred to, in hushed, palevoiced tones, as contenders for gigs of the century by any who survive it. Moholo will be joined at the hip by Kyle Shepherd and Shabaka Hutchings, along with Benguela steersman Brydon Bolton. One band, four band leaders, as SNC points out.
Unfortunate terminology and sociohistoric connotations aside, the fact is that even apoplectic enemies of “that horrible clanging mess like weird animals dying” can recognise the spirit of jazz in flight when they hear it. I will now be brash and suggest that I apprehend the essence of jazz, and why it breathes most comfortably in its most generous setting – on stage in front of a live, undulant audience. Jazz is, at its heart, about following the sonic muse through the art and accidents of improvisation.
It is 8 January 2016, Straight No Chaser, is filled beyond capacity (hungry legs are trying to steal through the closed doors in belated attendance). People are spilling respectfully over the otherwise neat bar counter. The room is hushed. We are all friends of jazz here, we are all deep lovers tonight.
There is a faintest cough as Shabaka clears his sax’s throat, the piano keys quiet hum in anticipation of Kyle’s ‘illuminant’ fingers. Shane Cooper, holding his bass like some profound, medium sized baobab, nods at drummer Jonno Sweetman. Behind me someone inhales audibly. And we’re off.
A mahogany space, Straight No Chaser has a wondrous history – relatively short, and once very nearly destroyed by the sinister threat of capitalist concerns, it is populated by the scents and memories of hundreds of profound moments and jawdropping, soul shifting improvisational about- turns and legend upon legend of live and improvised music.
It is owned, at heart, by musicians, most centrally local drummer extraordinaire Kesivan Naidoo, and, almost as crucially, seats perhaps 60 souls at most.
The Kyle Shepherd trio, an outfit so tight that they’re supple and carefree, based on years of playing together in various genres and guises, is tonight augmented by the unassuming astonishment which is Shabaka Hutchings, a multiply-lauded UK-based saxophonist and leader of acclaimed outfit Sons of Kemet. Things get intense very very quickly.
Shabaka is something else. Boyish in the face, a beaming innocence accompanies his gentle voice when he speaks, he seems around eight feet tall in person and nine feet tall on stage. From my notes, scribbled that night with blind eyes and ears itching behind my ears: “#1. A typically ‘beaut’ Kyle solo creates a subtle plateau, from which Shabaka Hutchings suddenly unleashes some kind of hyperdynamic sax waterfall explosion situation.” That was the evening’s opener.
Hutchings has joined the trio before in 2013, and it shows. This is very much Mr. Shepherd’s band, but for these gigs Hutchings is afforded the foreground. His soloing casually slips into intensities that mesmerise the audience members, who collapse into whoops and applause upon being released – after the conclusion of one particularly fiery crescendo, all four musos bent to the winds, careening effortlessly on, one kid shouts “That should be illegal!”
Elsewhere over the course of their two sets there are spare, shuffling grooves reminiscent of The Bad Plus, and a highlight, one segment where the band pulls back and focus entirely on Kyle, seemingly transposing Bach into some oriental pianistic realm with slivers of vastrap slipping in – during one breathless phase his typically liquid flow is interrogated by stabs from his raised left hand – I look behind me and through SNC’s closed doors see three trees harmonizing along in sway. A transcendent moment in time.
Jazz in the mother city is alive and frothing at the seams! See the venue’s lineup on facebook for more adventurous music.