Shabaka’s tribute to wisdom of elders
IT’S a poignant twist of fate that on the day we learned of the death of South African jazz legend Hugh Masekela, Shabaka and the Ancestors were on stage for Sydney Festival.
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IT’S a poignant twist of fate that on the day we learned of the death of the father of South African jazz Hugh Masekela, London composer and saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings performed for the Sydney Festival with his band of musicians from Johannesburg.
The concert was based around seven numbers from their highly acclaimed 2016 album Wisdom of Elders, made in an astonishing six-hour period in which eight of the nine tracks, all composed by Hutchings, were first takes.
Hutchings describes the work, recorded in Johannesburg and featuring seven local jazz musicians, as a “nine-part psalm”. For this festival gig he came without keyboard maestro Nduduzo Makhatini and trumpeter Mandla Mlangeni. To this listener the music was just as exciting. What it lost in Mlangeni’s ballsy trumpet solos and the layers and wash of Makhatini’s Rhodes piano it more than made up for with the duels and duets between Hutchings and the alto sax of Mthunzi Mvubu.
POTENT
It also threw into sharp relief the boundless energy and invention of the rhythm section. Drummer Tumi Morogosi and percussionist Gontse Makene, seated behind an array of five conga drums, bounced off each other’s ideas, driven by the potent and probing rhythms of Ariel Zomonsky’s double bass.
Shabaka, born in London and then raised in the Caribbean before returning to England, is built like he could be handy on the basketball court, his long tapered fingers flying over the keys of his tenor sax. John Coltrane’s influence is obvious in a lot of his work, but he has an amazingly varied palette — from breathy mellow to fierce, stabbing bravado runs. When the band is in full swing the audience dances in their seats and it feels like the chemical structure of your body is being rearranged.
Hutchings, grinning from ear to ear, takes delight in the tight and imaginative music-making of his colleagues
Singer Siabonga Mthemba’s strong and emotive voice weaves in and out of the numbers, at times sounding like the third member of a sax trio, at others singing a bluesy hymn about a mother and her child, as in The Observer. There is a strong message here about how the world needs to be “feminised” to stop the violence, domestic and political, and a new beginning will come.
The songs segue neatly into each other — from the opening 10-minute Give Thanks to the wild The Sea, driven by Morogosi’s tempestuous drumming, some of the time with timpani sticks, at others with wood.
JUBILATION
After the ecstatic solos of both saxes in The Observer, things get sweetly melodic for Joyous, Hutchings putting out a lovely floating solo followed by Mvubu’s more angular alto.
Each song is a suite within itself — time signatures change, the mood may go from Afro-jazz to Latin or calypso in a flick of the switch from bassist Zomonsky and a three-minute solo might announce the next number.
Introspection transforms to jubilation, grooves and riffs give way to the word — spoken and sung — but throughout it all Hutchings, grinning from ear to ear, takes delight in the tight and imaginative music-making of his colleagues.
After a standing ovation the encore, Chika Chikka by Ethiopian jazz master Mulatu Astatke, dies back to a spoken refrain from Mthemba with the recurring plea for understanding, “The burning of the republic of the mind and not the republic of the heart — we need you people, we need your psalms, we need your hymns, we need your prayers”.
And, with Masekela’s musical spirit overseeing the evening, he pays a brief tribute to the prime mover of South African music — “may he rest in power”.
This was very much an evening where exciting and dynamic musicians were honouring the wisdom of the elders.
SYDNEY FESTIVAL
● CONCERT: Shabaka and the Ancestors
● WHERE: City Recital Hall Angel Place
● WHEN: Wednesday, January 24