JAZZTIMES.COM 25C
ould you please hold it a mo-
ment?” Abdullah Ibrahim asks,
staving off my question. “Just so
I can prepare my tea.”
We are sitting in a small conference
room at Ibrahim’s Washington, D.C.
hotel a day after he’d been honored
at the Kennedy Center’s 2019 NEA
Jazz Masters tribute concert. A server
stands before us, pouring hot water.
Ibrahim isn’t brusque in pre-empting
me; he doesn’t even seem particularly
annoyed. But the 84-year-old South Af-
rican pianist and composer personifies
dignity. He insists on a certain respect,
a certain protocol.
“It’s actually very hard to find
someone who’s going to work out in
his band,” says saxophonist and flutist
Cleave Guyton, Jr., who plays with Ibra-
him on his new album, The Balance, re-
leased in late June by Gearbox Records.
“It’s not just about finding a person
who can play like Abdullah wants—it’s
also about having the right manners.
They have to be a serious musician, but
they also have to be somebody who
has a particular attitude and can be a
gentleman.”
It makes sense. Ibrahim—who
performed as Dollar Brand into the
late 1970s—endured South Africa’s
brutal apartheid regime, and his music,
a potent compound of jazz and South
African influences, became a symbol of
resistance to and liberation from apart-
heid. No less an eminence than Nelson
Mandela described Ibrahim as “South
Africa’s Mozart.”
Along with dignity comes grace,
which anybody who has heard his
music surely knows. And they were ondisplay in Ibrahim’s acceptance of the
Jazz Masters fellowship. Appearing
on the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall
stage to a standing ovation, the tall,
slender, besuited pianist stood silently
for a long moment after the applause
had died down.
“Good evening, esteemed NEA
members, jazz musicians, and guests,”
he finally said. “I am deeply honored by
this award. And I dedicate this award
to my grandmother, who sent me to the
local school teacher in Cape Town for
piano lessons. She insisted on Sunday
church attendance, instilling an inspi-
rational bedrock that still inspires and
guides me.”
He continued, “I dedicate this award
to my mother, who played piano for si-
lent movies in Cape Town. That was my
first introduction, for me, into the art
of improvisation. I dedicate this award
to all my family, friends, mentors, and
musicians who have and still inspire
my quest to strive for perfection. Thank
you. We are blessed.”If his acceptance speech packed
in a lot of autobiography, it still only
scratched the surface of an eventful,
sometimes traumatic life. He was born
Adolph Brand in 1934 in the Kensing-
ton neighborhood of Cape Town. His
father, Senzo, was of the Sotho ethnic
group and was murdered when Ibrahim
was four. His mother, Rachel, was of
mixed race and, like young Adolph, was
classified as “coloured.”
He had to beg for the piano lessons
his grandmother, a church pianist in
the local African Methodist Episcopal
congregation, agreed to send him towhen he was seven. Ibrahim was en-
amored with the sound of the instru-
ment—and the education he received
would provide him with a firm musical
foundation. “The school teachers would
study via correspondence course with
the Royal Academy in London,” he re-
calls. “My first primer included Pinetop
Smith and Louis Jordan, and folk songs
from Europe and America, as well as
the classical repertoire. I studied Indian
ragas and talas. Those teachers in the
township gave us a very broad perspec-
tive of music from all over the world.”
The music of the township itself was
not part of the curriculum, but it didn’t
need to be—marabi and mbaqanga
music were all around him. So were
langarm, the dance tunes popular
with young white South Africans, and
Christian hymns, played at home and
in church. And so was jazz, brought in
by the American soldiers and sailors
who came into port in Cape Town
during World War II. Ibrahim began
hanging out at the docks, looking for
GIs who would sell him their Duke
Ellington and Art Tatum records—a
hustle for which his friends nicknamed
him “Dollar.”
Rigid racial segregation had long
been the norm in South Africa, but the
apartheid regime began when Ibrahim
was a teenager, at the same time that he
was beginning to play music profes-
sionally.
“It pervaded all existence,” he says.
“It even became much more difficult
to be creative. One of the laws that was
passed said that as a musician, you
could only play with other musicians
GA designated to your own ethnic or tribal
BR
IEL
BE
RTO
GG
Grace
Under
Pressure
“
x Concert Review: Abdullah Ibrahim & Ekaya in Brooklyn, April 2018