26 JAZZTIMES SEPTEMBER 2019
group, and to audiences of your own
ethnic or tribal group. But we found
ways to transcend these barriers. The
only way to police us was when we were
playing in public places, so we played
privately. In homes, in communities,
and we created our own venues.”
In 1959, having made a name for
himself in Cape Town and Johannes-
burg, Ibrahim formed a new band with
trumpeter Hugh Masekela called the
Jazz Epistles—a sextet that is generally
regarded as South Africa’s first signifi-
cant bebop outfit. Technically, the band
was illegal; all of its members came
from different tribal and ethnic back-
grounds. Bop, however, was not well
understood by the authorities, and theEpistles took full advantage, making
music that incorporated a multicultural
mélange of influences and calling it
modern jazz. They boldly hit the night-
clubs, performing in the black venues
of Cape Town’s bustling District Six as
well as whites-only establishments.
“What we did was to hide it in plain
sight,” Ibrahim tells me. “But you still
had to be very subtle. We wrote a com-
position called ‘Scullery Department.’
When we played in white institutions,
white clubs, you couldn’t mix. During
intermission, black musicians had
to go into the kitchen. And so [alto
saxophonist] Kippie Moeketsi started
writing a tune, and I wrote the bridge,
and we said, ‘What shall we call this
song?’ We’re in the kitchen, so ‘Scullery
Department.’ It was like a code: The
people knew that it meant segregation.”
The Jazz Epistles recorded one
album, Jazz Epistle: Verse 1, in Janu-ary 1960. Two months later, however,
came a watershed event in the history
of South Africa: State police opened
fire on a crowd of black protesters in
the northern township of Sharpeville,
killing 69 people. It led to a severe
government crackdown on black South
Africans, in particular large group
assemblies (including concert audienc-
es). Small groups weren’t immune from
being targeted either; black musicians
were banned from white clubs, and po-
lice began disrupting even the Epistles’
rehearsals. Finally, Masekela, Moeketsi,
and trombonist Jonas Gwangwa joined
an international touring company for
a musical, traveling to London and
ultimately remaining there in exile.
Ibrahim initially resisted emigrating,
certain that he was on the verge of a big
break. But by 1962, as state oppression
intensified, he left South Africa and
settled in Zurich along with his future
wife, vocalist Sathima Bea Benjamin,
and the remaining Epistles.It was in Zurich that Ibrahim
found the break he’d held out for in
Cape Town. When Benjamin met Duke
Ellington as he toured through the city
in the winter of 1963, she invited him
to come see the Dollar Brand Trio at
a local club. The great bandleader and
composer was impressed—and became
a champion of Ibrahim’s music. Within
just a few days, he had arranged a
recording session for the trio in Paris,
under the auspices of Reprise Records.
Duke Ellington Presents the Dollar
Brand Trio reveals a pianist heavily in-
debted to Thelonious Monk and Elling-
ton himself, but not much of an overt
South African influence is on display.
After Ibrahim married Benjamin and
moved to New York in 1965, he began
flirting with the avant-garde. But he
stayed away from the defiant cultural
identity of the Jazz Epistles. Drugs and
alcohol soon threatened to destroy his
career altogether.
In 1968, he converted to Islam, took
the new name of Abdullah Ibrahim
(though he would continue to perform
as Dollar Brand for another decade),
and purged himself of his addictions.
Islam, he says, taught him about unity.
“Like our illustrious poet Rumi says,
there’s only one sound,” Ibrahim ob-
serves. “Everything else is an echo.”Meeting Ornette Coleman and Don
Cherry, Ibrahim was astonished and
inspired to discover that they had taken
cues from the Jazz Epistles record.
“That period, going into the 1970s, was
a period of defining one’s own identi-
ty—and not just in Africa,” Ibrahim
says. “It was a global point in time
where people said, ‘We need to affirm
our own.’ So that for us was important
in terms of the music.”
With that in mind, Ibrahim set
out to mine every aspect of his own
experience and incorporate it into his
work: mbaqanga street music, marabi
and langarm dances, European classical
works. The gospel chord progressions
he heard in his grandmother’s church,
above all else, became the foundation of
his sound.
“The harmonic progressions that
Abdullah uses—it speaks to what I try
to tell my students all the time about
being an artist: You have to be true to
who you are,” says trumpeter Terence
Blanchard, who has toured frequently
with Ibrahim. “His progressions carry
the weight of the folk traditions of
South Africa’s music. But he’s taken
them into different directions because
of his knowledge of jazz, and it’s one
of the things that has created a very
unique sound.”
Ibrahim moved back to Cape Town
in 1973. The apartheid government
was in the middle of forcibly vacating
District Six and resettling its residents
in the township of Mannenberg—a
policy that inspired Ibrahim’s composi-
tion “Mannenberg,” which he recorded
in Cape Town in the summer of 1974.
With its instantly memorable tune and
a groove that drew from gospel, jazz,
and marabi, the song (released stateside
as “Cape Town Fringe”) became a
massive hit. It also became a celebrated
anthem of anti-apartheid resistance—
and the unofficial theme song of the
1976 Soweto youth uprising.
It was transformative even for some
of Ibrahim’s sidemen. “The first time I
played ‘Mannenberg,’ or ‘Cape Town
Fringe,’ however you know that song,
I could not believe the response from
the audience,” says Horace Alexander
Young, who served as Ibrahim’s sax-
ophonist, flutist, and musical director
in the 1990s. “It was in New Orleans,
and there were people from SouthŬ*GJCUCƓTOITCUR
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