The South African Music Graph

Everyone and everything on the map

Person

• Rashid Lombard

  Cape Town news photographer who documented the worst years of the 1980s, including Desmond Tutu being tear-gassed in Gugulethu in 1989, and then co-founded the city's international jazz festival and ran it through his company espAfrika. He was given the National Order of Ikhamanga in Silver in 2014 and died in June 2025, aged 74.

  Cape Town1 connection

• Rashid Vally

  Johannesburg record dealer who ran the Kohinoor shop and paid for the sessions that produced "Mannenberg" in 1974. He put the acetates on loudspeakers outside the shop before the record was pressed, sold five thousand copies in a week, then did a deal with Gallo to reach the rest of the country. He founded the As-Shams label and died in 2024.

  1930s3 connections

Artist

• Abdullah Ibrahim

  Born Adolph Johannes Brand in Cape Town in 1934, he grew up in Kensington and learned marabi, langarm and American jazz before helping found the Jazz Epistles in 1959. He left South Africa in the early 1960s, recorded in Paris at Duke Ellington's urging, and came home to cut "Mannenberg" in 1974. He died in June 2026 at the age of 91.

  1930sCape Town19 connections

• Basil Coetzee

  Tenor saxophonist born in District Six in 1944, whose family was moved to Manenberg under the Group Areas Act. He took the first solo on "Mannenberg" in 1974 and carried the nickname of the township for the rest of his life. Through the 1980s he played the tune at rally after rally, which is how it became an anthem. He died in 1998.

  1940sCape Town12 connections

• Bheki Mseleku

  Self-taught pianist, saxophonist and singer from Lamontville in Durban, born in 1955, who made his London debut at Ronnie Scott's in 1987 and recorded with Abbey Lincoln, Pharoah Sanders and Joe Henderson. He taught young South African players when he came home. He died in London in 2008 after years of diabetes.

  1950s2 connections

• Black Coffee

  Nkosinathi Maphumulo, born in Umlazi near Durban in 1976, who lost the use of his left arm in a car accident during the celebrations of Nelson Mandela's release in 1990. He studied jazz in Durban, came through the Red Bull Music Academy in 2003 and turned South African house into a global export. Subconsciously won a Grammy in 2022.

  1970s

• Bokani Dyer

  Pianist and composer born in Gaborone in 1986, the child of a South African exile family, who moved to South Africa as a child and studied jazz at the University of Cape Town, graduating in 2008. He won the Standard Bank Young Artist award for jazz in 2011 and plays in Shane Cooper's band Mabuta. His music runs from trio jazz to electronics.

  1980sCape Town3 connections

• Brenda Fassie

  Singer born in Langa in Cape Town in 1964, who moved to Soweto at sixteen and became the biggest pop voice in the country. "Weekend Special" made her name in 1983 and Memeza was the best selling South African album of 1998. Time called her the Madonna of the townships in 2001. She died in Johannesburg in 2004, aged 39.

  1960sCape Town4 connections

• Chris McGregor

  Pianist born in Somerset West in 1936, who studied at the University of Cape Town and built the Blue Notes out of the city's mixed jazz scene. Playing across the colour line was illegal, so in 1964 the band left for the Antibes festival and stayed away. In London he built the big band Brotherhood of Breath. He died in France in 1990.

  1930sCape Town6 connections

• Dudu Pukwana

  Alto saxophonist born in Port Elizabeth in 1938 who left with the Blue Notes in 1964 and never came back. In London he played in the Brotherhood of Breath and led his own bands, Assagai, Spear and Zila, bringing township melody into the free jazz of the city. He played at the Mandela tribute concert at Wembley in 1989 and died the next year.

  1930s6 connections

• Errol Dyers

  Self-taught Cape Town guitarist, born in 1952, who put the goema beat of the carnival into jazz guitar. He played with Abdullah Ibrahim, Basil Coetzee, Robbie Jansen and Winston Mankunku, and Mason quotes him on how musicians turned "Mannenberg" into a protest anthem. He died of emphysema in Cape Town in 2017.

  1950sCape Town6 connections

• Hilton Schilder

  Cape Town pianist from the Schilder family of musicians, son of Tony Schilder and nephew of Chris Schilder. He supplied the jazz side of the Genuines in the 1980s and played in Robbie Jansen's bands. Mason quotes him remembering Jansen talking to crowds about rising up while "Mannenberg" played.

  Cape Town4 connections

• Hotep Idris Galeta

  Cape Town pianist, born Cecil Galeta in 1941 and known as Cecil Barnard before he left. He went into exile in 1961, worked in the United States with Hugh Masekela and Jackie McLean, and taught at the University of Hartford. He came home in 1991 and spent the rest of his life teaching young musicians. He died in 2010.

  1940sCape Town5 connections

• Hugh Masekela

  Trumpeter born in Witbank in 1939, who got his first horn through the anti-apartheid priest Trevor Huddleston and played in the Jazz Epistles before leaving South Africa after Sharpeville. "Grazing in the Grass" made him a number one hit in America in 1968, and "Bring Him Back Home" became an anthem for Nelson Mandela's release. He died in 2018.

  1930s8 connections

• Johnny Dyani

  Double bassist from the Eastern Cape who joined the Blue Notes as a teenager and left South Africa with them in 1964. He settled in Scandinavia and played with Steve Lacy, Don Cherry and Abdullah Ibrahim, taking the music deep into free jazz. He collapsed after a concert in Berlin in 1986 and died there, and the surviving Blue Notes recorded a memorial for him.

  3 connections

• Jonas Gwangwa

  Trombonist and composer from Orlando East in Soweto who played in the Jazz Epistles, went into exile, and for ten years led Amandla, the ANC's cultural ensemble, at Oliver Tambo's request. He wrote the score for Cry Freedom and was nominated at the 1988 Academy Awards. He came home in 1991 and died in 2021.

  1930s6 connections

• Kesivan Naidoo

  Drummer born in East London in 1979, who studied jazz at the University of Cape Town's South African College of Music and won the Standard Bank Young Artist award for jazz in 2009. Bheki Mseleku shaped his playing, and he worked with Hotep Idris Galeta, Winston Mankunku Ngozi and Miriam Makeba. He leads Kesivan and the Lights.

  1970sCape Town5 connections

• Kippie Moeketsi

  Alto saxophonist, born in 1925, who started on clarinet in a band called the Band in Blue and became the leading saxophone voice of the bebop generation. He called the Jazz Epistles the best band he ever played in. Wikipedia records the epithet South Africa's Charlie Parker without saying who coined it. He died in 1983.

  1920s4 connections

• Kyle Shepherd

  Cape Town pianist and film composer born in 1987, who started on violin and moved to piano at fifteen. He was mentored by Zim Ngqawana and trained partly around Abdullah Ibrahim's M7 school, where his mother taught, and he leads a trio with Shane Cooper and Jonno Sweetman. He won the Standard Bank Young Artist award for jazz in 2014 and scored Noem My Skollie.

  1980sCape Town8 connections

• Louis Moholo-Moholo

  Drummer born in Langa in Cape Town in 1940, who left with the Blue Notes in 1964 and became a central figure in European free jazz. He was the last of the six left alive, and the only one who lived to play in a South Africa without apartheid. He moved back to Cape Town in 2005 and died there in June 2025, aged 85.

  1940sCape Town5 connections

• Mac McKenzie

  Bassist and composer, born Gerald McKenzie in Bridgetown, Cape Town, in 1951, the son of a banjo player and carnival leader known as Mr Mac. He led the Genuines, the band that took the carnival's goema rhythm into rock and jazz and then called the result goema. He died in 2024.

  1950sCape Town4 connections

• Miriam Makeba

  Singer born in Johannesburg in 1932, who came up through the Manhattan Brothers and the Skylarks and took the female lead in the jazz opera King Kong. South Africa cancelled her passport in 1960 while she was abroad, and she spent thirty years in exile, testifying against apartheid at the United Nations. She returned in 1990 and died in Italy in 2008.

  1930s8 connections

• Mongezi Feza

  Trumpeter from Queenstown, born in 1945, who was already playing at Cape Town jazz festivals as a teenager and left with the Blue Notes in 1964. In London he worked with the Brotherhood of Breath and with the rock musician Robert Wyatt. He died of untreated pneumonia in December 1975, aged 30, and his friends recorded a memorial for him nine days later.

  1940s4 connections

• Morris Goldberg

  Cape Town saxophonist, white and classically literate, who was brought into the 1974 "Mannenberg" session because he could read music and could teach Ibrahim's scores to players who could not. His remark about going to visit Gladys Williams in Manenberg gave the tune its name. He was left off the first credits.

  Cape Town3 connections

• Reza Khota

  Guitarist born in Johannesburg and now based in Cape Town, classically trained at Wits, who won the national classical guitar competition in 1998. He leads his own quartet and plays in Mabuta and in Kesivan and the Lights, and has worked with the artists William Kentridge and Nicholas Hlobo.

  Cape Town4 connections

• Robbie Jansen

  Alto saxophonist and flautist, born in 1949, who came up through the Cape Town rock and soul circuit and the band Oswietie before playing on the 1974 "Mannenberg" session. Known as the Cape Doctor, he spent the 1980s playing the tune at anti-apartheid concerts and talking to the crowds between choruses. He died in Cape Town in 2010.

  1940sCape Town12 connections

• Sathima Bea Benjamin

  Cape Town singer, born in Claremont in 1936, who left South Africa with Abdullah Ibrahim and spent most of her life in New York. It was Benjamin who persuaded Duke Ellington to come and hear the trio in Switzerland in 1963, the audition that opened Europe to them. She returned to Cape Town in 2011 and died there in 2013.

  1930sCape Town2 connections

• Shane Cooper

  Bassist, composer and producer born in 1985, who moved to Cape Town to study jazz at UCT and now works between jazz and electronic music. He plays in the Kyle Shepherd Trio, leads the band Mabuta and records dance music as Card On Spokes. He was the Standard Bank Young Artist for jazz in 2013.

  1980sCape Town6 connections

• Taliep Petersen

  Singer, composer and director who grew up in District Six and sang with the klopse from the age of six in his father's troupe, the Dark Town Strutters. With David Kramer he wrote the musicals that put Cape Town's own music on the stage, from District Six the Musical in 1987 to Ghoema in 2005. He was shot dead in his house in 2006.

  1950sCape Town3 connections

• Winston Mankunku Ngozi

  Tenor saxophonist from Retreat in Cape Town, born in 1943, who stayed in South Africa when others went into exile. His 1968 album "Yakhal' Inkomo" became one of the country's best selling records and a landmark of South African jazz. He played with Chris McGregor and Dudu Pukwana before they left. He died in Cape Town in 2009.

  1940sCape Town5 connections

• Zim Ngqawana

  Saxophonist and flautist born in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth, in 1959, who studied at Rhodes, at the University of Natal and in Massachusetts alongside Archie Shepp and Yusef Lateef. He directed the hundred-piece orchestra that played at Nelson Mandela's inauguration in 1994 and later built the Zimology Institute to teach outside the formal system. He died in 2011.

  1950s5 connections

Group

• Brotherhood of Breath

  The London big band Chris McGregor built after the Blue Notes, mixing the South African exiles with British players such as Harry Beckett and Harry Miller. Martin traces its signature overlapping entries back to McGregor's arrangement of a Kippie Moeketsi tune. It recorded from 1971 and broke up when McGregor moved to France.

  5 connections

• Jazz Epistles

  The bebop group formed in 1959 by Abdullah Ibrahim, Kippie Moeketsi, Hugh Masekela, Jonas Gwangwa, Johnny Gertze and Makaya Ntshoko. It mixed players classified coloured and African, and men from Cape Town and Johannesburg, at a time when that alone was a provocation. Their one album is remembered as the first jazz LP by black South African musicians.

  1950sCape Town4 connections

• Kyle Shepherd Trio

  Kyle Shepherd's trio with Shane Cooper on double bass and Jonno Sweetman on drums. Kesivan Naidoo held the drum chair earlier, and the group recorded and toured through the 2010s.

  Cape Town3 connections

• MABUTA

  The band Shane Cooper launched in 2018, with Bokani Dyer, Sisonke Xonti, Robin Fassie and Reza Khota. It mixes live jazz with electronic music, and its name is the Japanese word for eyelid.

  2010s3 connections

• Oswietie

  The Cape Town band, steeped in rock and soul rather than jazz, that Abdullah Ibrahim worked with on Underground in Africa in 1974. Basil Coetzee and Robbie Jansen played saxophones in it, and the sessions began the working partnership that produced "Mannenberg" later that year.

  Cape Town3 connections

• Pacific Express

  Cape Town band started in the 1960s by the bassist Paul Abrahams and the guitarist Issy Ariefdien, first aimed squarely at American soul and funk. Martin calls it the conservatory where a generation cut its teeth, Jonathan Butler, Basil Coetzee and Robbie Jansen among them.

  Cape Town3 connections

• The Blue Notes

  The mixed sextet Chris McGregor built in Cape Town, with Dudu Pukwana, Mongezi Feza, Nikele Moyake, Johnny Dyani and Louis Moholo-Moholo. A band of black and white players could not work legally in South Africa, so in 1964 they played the Antibes festival and stayed in Europe. Their sound changed British jazz, and only Moholo-Moholo lived to come home.

  Cape Town8 connections

• The Genuines

  The 1980s band led by Mac McKenzie, with Hilton Schilder on keys and Robbie Jansen often in the line-up, that pushed carnival rhythms through rock and jazz and called what came out goema. They played political rallies, and in 1987 recorded with McKenzie's father for Shifty Records.

  Cape Town4 connections

Song

• Mannenberg

  The tune Abdullah Ibrahim improvised at a prepared upright piano in Cape Town in June 1974, with Basil Coetzee taking the first solo. The groove is marabi, the saxophone sound is langarm and the beat sits close to a slow goema. Coetzee and Jansen then played it at rally after rally, and it became the anti-apartheid anthem of Cape Town.

  1970sCape Town13 connections

• Pata Pata

  The song Miriam Makeba first recorded with the Skylarks in the 1950s and cut again in 1967 for the American market, when it reached number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100. The title means touch touch in Xhosa and named a dance popular in Johannesburg shebeens.

  1960s3 connections

• Soweto Blues

  Hugh Masekela's protest song about the 1976 Soweto uprising, sung by Miriam Makeba. It carried the news of the killing of schoolchildren to audiences who would otherwise have heard only the government's account.

  1970s3 connections

Album

• Mannenberg - 'Is Where It's Happening'

  The 1974 LP that carried the tune, released by Rashid Vally after he decided the working title was not marketable. A photograph Ibrahim took of Gladys Williams was on the sleeve. With Gallo distributing it, 43,000 copies sold in South Africa within seven months, extraordinary for a jazz record.

  1970sCape Town3 connections

• Memeza

  Brenda Fassie's thirteenth album, produced by Sello Chicco Twala, which went platinum on the day of release and sold about 700,000 copies in South Africa. It mixes pop and kwaito and was the best selling South African album of 1998.

  1990s2 connections

Genre

• Cape jazz

  The name for jazz as Cape Town plays it, built on the goema beat of the carnival, the marabi groove and the saxophone sound of the langarm dance bands. Martin's view is that the idea of it was probably inspired by Abdullah Ibrahim's reworking of carnival tunes, and that what happened in the 1980s was the systematising of an older habit.

  Cape Town10 connections

• Goema

  Both a drum and a beat. The drum is a single-headed instrument built like a small wine cask, which the Dictionary of South African English traces through Afrikaans to a dialectal Malay word. The beat runs through the carnival, the Malay choirs and the dance bands, and in the 1980s the Genuines took the name for their own music.

  Cape Town9 connections

• Kwaito

  The slowed-down South African house music that came out of Soweto between the late 1980s and early 1990s, with loops, deep bass and township slang over the top. The name comes from the slang word kwaai. Brenda Fassie's Memeza is described as pop and kwaito.

  3 connections

• Kwela

  The pennywhistle music that carried South African sound abroad in the 1950s. South African History Online glosses the name as Zulu for get up, and notes that in township slang it also meant the police van. Basil Coetzee started out on the pennywhistle in 1958.

  3 connections

• Langarm

  The dance band music of coloured Cape Town, built on waltzes, foxtrots and South African steps such as vastrap and ticky-draai. Mason's point about "Mannenberg" is that its saxophone sound is langarm, which is a large part of why Cape Town listeners recognised themselves in it.

  Cape Town3 connections

• Marabi

  The township party music that grew in the slum yards of the mining towns from the end of the nineteenth century, built on a repeating chord pattern. Abdullah Ibrahim grew up playing it, and its groove is what people hear in "Mannenberg", helped by a piano prepared with thumbtacks in the hammers.

  5 connections

• Mbaqanga

  The African jazz that grew out of marabi and kwela from around 1950 and became the popular music of the townships. Zacks Nkosi's "Jackpot" is an mbaqanga tune, and Robbie Jansen counted mbaqanga among the styles a working Cape Town musician simply had to know.

  2 connections

Place

• Cape Flats

  The sandy plain east of central Cape Town where the apartheid state built the townships it moved people to, including Athlone, Manenberg, Gugulethu, Bonteheuwel, Hanover Park, Mitchells Plain and Khayelitsha. SAHO notes that the area has produced musicians from jazz to hip hop, alongside long unemployment and gang violence.

  Cape Town2 connections

• Cape Town

  The city whose music this graph is mostly about. Denis-Constant Martin's study treats it as a creole city where slavery, carnival, church music, dance bands and American jazz kept feeding each other. Apartheid then cut the city up, clearing District Six and pushing people out to the Cape Flats, and the music carries that history.

  Cape Town24 connections

• District Six

  The inner-city neighbourhood named in 1867 as the sixth municipal district, home to about 55,000 people before apartheid emptied it. It was declared a white area on 11 February 1966, and more than 60,000 people had been moved out to the Cape Flats by 1982. Basil Coetzee was born there and Taliep Petersen grew up there.

  1860sCape Town6 connections

• Johannesburg

  The other pole of South African jazz, where the Jazz Epistles played, where King Kong opened in 1959, where Rashid Vally ran the Kohinoor record shop, and where kwaito later grew out of house music in Soweto.

  7 connections

• Langa

  The oldest township in the Western Cape, opened in 1927 under the Urban Areas Act of 1923 after black residents were removed from Ndabeni. The name is Xhosa for sun and also recalls Chief Langalibalele. Louis Moholo-Moholo and Brenda Fassie were both born there.

  1920sCape Town3 connections

• London

  Where the Blue Notes settled in 1965 and where their music changed British jazz. Chris McGregor built the Brotherhood of Breath there, Dudu Pukwana and Mongezi Feza died there, Louis Moholo-Moholo was based there for four decades, and Bheki Mseleku made his name at Ronnie Scott's.

  8 connections

• Manenberg

  A Cape Flats township planned from November 1964 and built from 1966 under the Group Areas Act for families classified coloured. People were sent there from Constantia, District Six, the Bo-Kaap, Wynberg, Crawford, Sea Point and Lansdowne. Between 1966 and 1970 the state built 5,621 dwellings for 33,922 people. The song spells it with three n's.

  1960sCape Town5 connections

• New York City

  Where several of these musicians lived out their exile. Abdullah Ibrahim was there from the mid 1960s, playing alongside Coltrane, Coleman and Cherry, and it was in New York, Morris Goldberg said, that the two of them slowly became aware of what they had at home.

  6 connections

• Port Elizabeth

  The Eastern Cape city, now Gqeberha, where Dudu Pukwana was born in Walmer Township in 1938 and where both Zim Ngqawana and Feya Faku were born in New Brighton.

  2 connections

• Soweto

  The cluster of townships south west of Johannesburg, built from the 1930s under the Urban Areas Act, whose acronym was adopted in 1963. Jonas Gwangwa was born in Orlando East, Brenda Fassie moved there at sixteen, the 1976 uprising happened there, and kwaito came out of it in the 1990s.

  5 connections

Venue

• UCT South African College of Music

  The University of Cape Town's music school, where Chris McGregor studied in the 1950s and where Kesivan Naidoo and Bokani Dyer trained half a century later. Kyle Shepherd started there and left.

  Cape Town4 connections

Event

• Ghoema the musical

  The stage show David Kramer and Taliep Petersen made in 2005, which ran at the Baxter Theatre from 11 November 2005 to 7 January 2006. It follows Cape Town's music back to the spice trade and to the people brought to the Cape in slavery from Mozambique, Madagascar, India, Ceylon and Indonesia.

  2000sCape Town2 connections

• Kaapse Klopse

  Cape Town's new year carnival, whose troupes and competitions are one of the places the goema beat lives. Martin records that Afrikaans moppies, the comic songs descended from the old drum songs, were introduced into the carnival competitions in 1949. Taliep Petersen sang in his father's troupe from the age of six.

  Cape Town3 connections

• King Kong

  The all-African jazz opera that opened in Johannesburg in 1959, written by Todd Matshikiza with Harry Bloom and Pat Williams. Miriam Makeba took the female lead and Hugh Masekela played in the orchestra, and the European tour that followed carried several of the musicians out of the country for good.

  1950s4 connections

• Sharpeville massacre

  The killings of March 1960 that set off the repression which closed South Africa's mixed jazz clubs and pushed a generation of musicians abroad. Mason writes that the apartheid state attacked jazz relentlessly in the repression that followed.

  1960s3 connections

• Soweto uprising

  The student protest of 16 June 1976 against being taught in Afrikaans, and the police shooting that followed. It is the event behind Hugh Masekela's "Soweto Blues", and Abdullah Ibrahim declared his support for the ANC openly after it.

  1970s3 connections

Era

• apartheid era

  The years when the state sorted people by race and the music had to work around it: District Six declared white in 1966, the Cape Flats townships built to receive the people removed, mixed bands made illegal in 1963, and jazz driven out of the clubs after Sharpeville.

  1940s9 connections