The South African Music Graph

Everyone and everything on the map

Artist

• 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 Town1 connection

• 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 Town

• 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 Town

• 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.

  1940s

• 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 Town1 connection

• 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 Town

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.

  1940s