Gwen Ansell
17 August 2006
Johannesburg — A WEEK to go to the launch of the JOY OF JAZZ festival, which opens at the Standard Bank Arena next Thursday with a large-scale event featuring its two most popular names: UK vocal wunderkind Jamie Cullum and Cape Town-born, UK-based guitar veteran Jonathan Butler.
There have been some programme changes since this column last previewed the event, though none which dramatically alters the character of the relevant concert.
The guitar summit programme on Friday August 25 now also includes a set from veteran Johnny Clegg, and the five-singer vocal summit on Saturday August 26, African Soul Sisters, will involve the talents of an interesting new signing to the Chissa label: teenager Corlea Botha.
Botha's debut album, Shades of the Rainbow, showcases a powerful, soul-inflected voice, eliciting from publicists the inevitable coded cliches about life experience way beyond her years, and the inevitable comparisons to Joss Stone. It's time we stopped being surprised that white singers, too, can listen to and learn from soul, jazz and the blues -- those were, after all, the most influential genres shaping modern popular music across the globe. Instead, perhaps we should simply celebrate the pop world's acceptance of deep, rich female voices alongside the irritating tweeting and cooing of their higher-pitched sisters.
In the same show, there are sets from bassist Concorde Nkabinde and -- another new addition -- Nigerian popular music griot Lagbaja. He is no stranger to Johannesburg stages, having featured on an early Arts Alive bill, and those who heard him then will testify that he is one of the most interesting artists at this year's Joy of Jazz.
Lagbaja is a Yoruba word signifying a concept similar to Everyman: the Mystery Plays' ordinary character who observes and comments on great events from the perspective of the streets. His rejection of individualism (his 2001 album was titled We Before Me) is underlined by his stage costume: Lagbaja performs masked and hooded, to "represent the seeming facelessness and voicelessness of the common man".
He calls his style Africano, and on stage a typical pop line-up of western instruments plays support to various families of Yoruba drums, from the bata -- the sound also heard in Brazilian carnival and religious drumming -- to the intricate polyrhythmic dundun. Lagbaja told website Afropop Worldwide: "I don't try and evolve one particular style or groove: those grooves just come from traditional Yoruba grooves, which are a rich source of heavy rhythms."
Lagbaja's music mixes compelling dance tracks with songs taking society to task for its selfish and acquisitive attitudes: to other people, and to the land. He often calls for a return to traditional communal values that placed the interests of the group above individuals.
There's a clear line of connection to the revolutionary music of Fela Kuti, and it's one Lagbaja is happy to acknowledge: "It was Yoruba rhythms that gave rise to the music of Fela and Afrobeat. Fela is a Yoruba man." In the song Vernacular, Lagbaja even used sound clips to create a conversation between himself and Fela.
When, in 1997, the singer established his club, Motherlan', in the Ikeja suburb of Lagos, there were also echoes of Fela's Kalakuta Republic. The club was designed to resemble a village community, centred on a traditional square not only for music and dancing, but also for other types of live performance, including poetry, drama and stand-up comedy.
The singer would see nothing incongruous about performing at a jazz festival. "Rhythm and blues, soul, jazz, hip-hop, rap ... (although) they are using instruments that were developed from the west to perform, the music still has a lot of attitude that is totally African. The history of groove itself comes from Africa."
In fact, he cites jazz as a universal music that has developed from the interaction between African groove and other traditions: "There is no harmony structure that is more sophisticated than jazz."
Lagbaja is unfortunately not holding a workshop at this year's festival. But other artists are. On Thursday August 24, at the Bassline in Newtown at 10am, singer Nnenna Freelon will present Voices From Within. On the same day at 11am, Avishai Cohen will conduct an upright bass technique workshop at the Tshwane University of Technology Music School, and Ramsey Lewis's theme at South West Gauteng College will be Playing the Black Keys. On Friday August 25, Branford Marsalis will visit the Music Academy of Gauteng to discuss Soul Aspects of the Saxophone.
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