Cape Town Data
The South African Music Graph
See who taught whom, who played what and where, on one map of South African music.
See how South African musicians, songs and places are connected. Every connection below is sourced, and every node leads to what we know about it.
The map grew out of our article An Interactive Network of Cape Jazz Musicians.
The network
3 nodes on the map.
Everyone and everything on the map
Artist
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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.
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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.
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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.
Hear the music for yourself