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
6 nodes on the map.
Everyone and everything on the map
Artist
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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.
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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.
Song
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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.
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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.
Album
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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.
Event
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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.
Hear the music for yourself
Connections
- Mannenberg is associated with Mannenberg - 'Is Where It's Happening' (1974). the title track Source: As-Shams / The Sun Records: About
- Soweto Blues is the song of Soweto uprising (1976). Source: Wikipedia: Soweto Blues