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
8 nodes on the map.
Everyone and everything on the map
Group
-
Brotherhood of Breath
The London big band Chris McGregor built after the Blue Notes, mixing the South African exiles with British players such as Harry Beckett and Harry Miller. Martin traces its signature overlapping entries back to McGregor's arrangement of a Kippie Moeketsi tune. It recorded from 1971 and broke up when McGregor moved to France.
-
Jazz Epistles
The bebop group formed in 1959 by Abdullah Ibrahim, Kippie Moeketsi, Hugh Masekela, Jonas Gwangwa, Johnny Gertze and Makaya Ntshoko. It mixed players classified coloured and African, and men from Cape Town and Johannesburg, at a time when that alone was a provocation. Their one album is remembered as the first jazz LP by black South African musicians.
-
Kyle Shepherd Trio
Kyle Shepherd's trio with Shane Cooper on double bass and Jonno Sweetman on drums. Kesivan Naidoo held the drum chair earlier, and the group recorded and toured through the 2010s.
-
MABUTA
The band Shane Cooper launched in 2018, with Bokani Dyer, Sisonke Xonti, Robin Fassie and Reza Khota. It mixes live jazz with electronic music, and its name is the Japanese word for eyelid.
-
Oswietie
The Cape Town band, steeped in rock and soul rather than jazz, that Abdullah Ibrahim worked with on Underground in Africa in 1974. Basil Coetzee and Robbie Jansen played saxophones in it, and the sessions began the working partnership that produced "Mannenberg" later that year.
-
Pacific Express
Cape Town band started in the 1960s by the bassist Paul Abrahams and the guitarist Issy Ariefdien, first aimed squarely at American soul and funk. Martin calls it the conservatory where a generation cut its teeth, Jonathan Butler, Basil Coetzee and Robbie Jansen among them.
-
The Blue Notes
The mixed sextet Chris McGregor built in Cape Town, with Dudu Pukwana, Mongezi Feza, Nikele Moyake, Johnny Dyani and Louis Moholo-Moholo. A band of black and white players could not work legally in South Africa, so in 1964 they played the Antibes festival and stayed in Europe. Their sound changed British jazz, and only Moholo-Moholo lived to come home.
-
The Genuines
The 1980s band led by Mac McKenzie, with Hilton Schilder on keys and Robbie Jansen often in the line-up, that pushed carnival rhythms through rock and jazz and called what came out goema. They played political rallies, and in 1987 recorded with McKenzie's father for Shifty Records.
Hear the music for yourself