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.
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Abdullah Ibrahim recorded "Mannenberg" in Cape Town in June 1974 with Basil Coetzee, Robbie Jansen, Morris Goldberg and Monty Weber, produced by Rashid Vally for the As-Shams label.
Music Manenberg 1974 Cape Town
Source: SAHA Sunday Times Heritage Project: Mannenberg · Africa Is a Country: How Rashid Vally showed us the way
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Cape jazz emerged in Cape Town from the late 1950s. Valmont Layne of the University of the Western Cape, who wrote his doctorate on goema, describes it as the rhythmic essence of collective life among the poor and traces its links to Cape jazz.
Music District Six 1959 Cape Town
Source: Denis-Constant Martin: Sounding the Cape (African Minds, 2013), p. 353 · University of the Western Cape: Art activist Layne probes goema music for his doctorate
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Mason argues that Basil Coetzee and Robbie Jansen turned a 1974 hit into an anthem by putting it at the centre of rallies and benefit concerts through the 1980s, including the youth festival at the national launch of the UDF in August 1983.
Music Cape Town 1983–1990 Cape Town
Source: John Edwin Mason, "Mannenberg": Notes on the Making of an Icon and Anthem, African Studies Quarterly 9(4), 2007 · South African History Online: Basil Coetzee
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Mason breaks the tune into familiar local ingredients: a marabi groove, a beat close to ticky-draai or a lazy ghoema, saxophones with a langarm sound, and a jazz aesthetic holding it together.
Music 1974 Cape Town
Source: John Edwin Mason, "Mannenberg": Notes on the Making of an Icon and Anthem, African Studies Quarterly 9(4), 2007 · Denis-Constant Martin, Sounding the Cape: Music, Identity and Politics in South Africa (African Minds, 2013)
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Martin writes that the Genuines, led by Mac McKenzie with Hilton Schilder and often Robbie Jansen, named their music ghoema and recorded Mr Mac and the Genuines for Shifty Records in 1987. The Dictionary of South African English lists that 1980s style as a second sense of the word.
Music 1987 Cape Town
Source: Denis-Constant Martin, Sounding the Cape: Music, Identity and Politics in South Africa (African Minds, 2013) · Dictionary of South African English: ghomma
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