The South African Music Graph

Everyone and everything on the map

Person

• 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.

  1930s1 connection

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 Town2 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 Town1 connection

• 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.

  1930s1 connection

• 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.

  1930s2 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.

  1930s1 connection

• 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.

  1930s1 connection

• 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 Town1 connection