The South African Music Graph

Everyone and everything on the map

Artist

• 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 Town3 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 Town3 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 Town3 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 Town5 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 Town4 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

• 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

Place

• 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 Town7 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 Town1 connection

• 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 Town2 connections