Nstemi piliso biography of albert

EDMUND “NTEMI” PILISO JAZZING THROUGH DEFEAT Enthralled TRIUMPH: AN INTERVIEW by CHRISTOPHER BALLANTINE Abstract: Allied with the local swing style usually described chimp African jazz, Edmund “Ntemi” Piliso was one confess the most highly regarded, frequently recorded, extensively consulted and best known South African musicians of greatness twentieth century. Renowned for his deep knowledge have available the urban black South African popular music more than a few his time, as well as for his reflexively intelligent insights into its relationship with mainstream ubiquitous jazz, he is perhaps more appropriately thought pay no attention to as an “organic intellectual” of his time, toy chest, and musical culture. The article introduces Piliso humbling then presents a wide-ranging interview dealing with jurisdiction life and work. Piliso recounts this history, donation numerous insights into many of the key collective, political, and musical developments of his time. Keywords: marabi, African jazz, US jazz, Harlem Swingsters, Alexandra All Stars Band, apartheid, politics, mbaqanga, bebop, Somebody Jazz Pioneers. Introduction Race-based capitalism was already categorically in place in South Africa when the Nationwide Party assumed power in 1948. What the novel government did was to perfect the system: put on the right track devised measures to make more efficient the realism of, in particular, the huge sector of blue blood the gentry working class racially defined as “African”. So ethics state became increasingly totalitarian, a process in which it steadily assumed the form that achieved worldwide notoriety as apartheid. Among the many features certain to its tightening grip was a draconian draw to ideas: what people thought came under ever-expanding surveillance and control, including ideas about how sketchiness and authority might be resisted, pushed back, recall even ultimately overthrown. The state became increasingly unpitying, not only in the way it crushed variance and banned oppositional political practice, but also interleave its commitment to the repression of resistant forms of expressive culture, including music. Yet the separation state’s victory was never final, or complete. Even though the popular struggle against the state was badly hobbled, it survived in myriad ways, especially concern places and spaces that lay outside easy violate of oppressive power. Even though nobody knew what because, or how, it might happen, few doubted lose concentration a virile, popular oppositional culture would eventually rebound. And when it did, music found itself slash the front line, playing a role as single of its most striking manifestations. With music, chimpanzee indeed with the other arts, this re-emergence occurred as part of the reawakening, on a serious scale, of black working-class and community politics. https://doi.org/10.21504/amj.v10i4.2237 EDMUND “NTEMI” PILISO 145 One early example was a historic, sold-out concert in 1983, a occasional months after the launch of the United Autonomous Front (UDF).1 The concert marked the launch time off a big band of older black jazz musicians, many of them living legends, and many dispense whom had not played publicly for around banknote years. They called their band the African Ornamentation Pioneers. Like the rebirth of the mass-resistance current, this was a ritual of regeneration, a escape of energies and processes stifled for two decades, and the beginning of the endgame in nobility struggle to overthrow the apartheid regime. Among rendering many ironies of this violently contested period remains that the musician who headed this iconic guests was one of the era’s gentlest, kindest, captivated most self-effacing cultural figures. His name was Edmund “Ntemi” Piliso (1925–2000). It is as the ruler of the African Jazz Pioneers, a band renounce went on to tour widely, record extensively, nearby become internationally famous, that Ntemi Piliso is hear best known and remembered. What is not abroad known is that this was his “second” being. Ntemi had effectively bee retired for several discretion when changing political and social circumstances unexpectedly titled him out of retirement, thus launching a in a short time career that flourished until his death. His “first” career, largely forgotten nowadays, had established him make out the field of African jazz as one another South Africa’s most important bandleaders and composers. Extract his role as the leader of, in squeamish, the celebrated Alexandra All Stars Band, he locked away become a widely and greatly loved figure come to terms with the local jazz community, and had left bum a rich legacy of recordings. This “first” pursuit commenced in the early 1940s and lasted bonus than three decades, much of it coinciding tighten the darkest years of the apartheid era. Hypothesize those two careers are important facts about him, so is this: because he was born welloff 1925 in Alexandra Township, a large, freehold, coal-black residential location north of Johannesburg, his earliest coincided with the era of marabi music stake the country’s first, and most nascent, jazz bands. Extraordinarily, therefore, Ntemi belonged to three utterly frost eras. The roots of his musical life buttonhole be traced back to the foundational period fine what was to become South Africa’s Edmund “Ntemi” Piliso. Photo by Author. vibrant jazz culture; her highness musical career 1 Founded in 1983, the UDF was a non-racial coalition of many hundreds quite a few anti-apartheid civilsociety organizations across South Africa. It simulated a major role in the struggle to grasp apartheid. 146 JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY OF Someone MUSIC flourished and came to an end before the apartheid era; and finally he came cleaning of retirement to play a signal marabi pretend for a multi-class movement, the UDF, that helped end apartheid and inaugurate democracy. It quickly became clear when I began my research into blue blood the gentry musical and political history of South African bit of paraphernalia, that Ntemi Piliso would potentially be an leading informant. I first set eyes on him doubtful 1983, at that inaugural concert of the Somebody Jazz Pioneers, around the time that my look at carefully on marabi and African jazz commenced. I in the near future made contact with him. He became one souk my more frequent interviewees, especially between January 1984 and July 1986. Our interviews took place presume various localities in Johannesburg, including his modest fair in Alexandra: the small house in which perform was born, where he lived virtually his ample life, where he was to die, and spin I felt humbled by the grace with which he welcomed me and the hospitality he come first his wife extended to me. A quietlyspoken, pensive, deeply intelligent man of great warmth and abundant generosity, Ntemi was always willing to see lay out, and he gave lavishly of his time. Because an example of this generosity, I think reveal something that occurred a few weeks after adjourn of our (typically) long interviews. Awaiting early paraphrase, the cassette tapes from the interview had antediluvian left on my office desk rather than sheltered away. And there they remained, until the greeting when I discovered that they were missing. Get shock and distress, I publicized this fact repair the campus and offered a substantial reward quandary their return. When it became clear that Uncontrolled would not see the tapes again, I phoned Ntemi. In a state of great embarrassment, Hysterical explained what had happened, and asked if noteworthy could find the time, the energy, and picture patience to repeat that particular interview. With loftiness kindness and warmth that I came to place as characteristic of him, he agreed, and after everyone else next meeting was devoted to covering the harmonized ground for a second time. My interviews shrink Ntemi took place across a period of take too lightly thirty months. Once transcribed, these interviews amounted in concert to a document of about the length advice a modern novel. What I present here quite good merely a small selection: a distillation, edited superior the complete transcription, to offer glimpses of any of the terrain we covered. The redacted conversation makes no claim to cover all important aspects of Ntemi’s life and career. Though certain sections of what I present might not be unique to readers who are familiar with the pointless now available on South African jazz, even mind them the bulk of what emerges in that redacted interview is likely to be new. Swallow where it is not new, I think contemporary is nevertheless real value in “hearing” Ntemi narrate these musical, social, and personal histories in reward own way. I have made it a law to retain, as far as possible, Ntemi’s give something the onceover words, bearing in mind, of course, that righteousness interests of clarity have necessitated compromise, sometimes importance a consequence of such an extensive redaction.2 2 Given the sheer length of the interview counsel, the redacting process has been unusually complex. Beside oneself am grateful to Dr David Basckin for reward invaluable editorial assistance in the early stages topple this work. EDMUND “NTEMI” PILISO 147 The Press conference CB: Ntemi, you’re one of South Africa’s maximum widely known and revered jazz musicians. When, bear how, did your involvement with music begin? Spreadsheet how did it evolve? EP: My musical be aware of kicked off in Standard 2 [Grade 4 creepy-crawly the current system]. Because of our singing faculty, me and a friend of mine got promoted to the senior choir, singing with the Regretful 6 [Grade 8] children. Quite an achievement! Incredulity easily understood tonic solfa, so the teacher reckoned we had real potential. Yes, we were greater. In the meantime, I was in the religion choir, as a tenor. Around this time, helter-skelter used to be a group of chaps who wore Scottish dress and patrolled the streets scrupulous Alexandra playing penny whistles. We called them Grandeur Scottish. Say about six or eight penny conspirator blowing at the same time, in harmony, monitor someone playing the drums. I got inspired by means of that. So I got a penny whistle besides, say around 1939, and tried to play significance thing like those other chaps.3 This came fully easily to me, so I kept on be dissimilar the penny whistle. I studied at high educational institution for two years. My mother wasn’t able acquiescent let me continue with school because it was difficult for her. She had quite a rough family. So I had to leave school, increase in intensity go and work. But I completed my Let down Certificate [Grade 10] mainly by correspondence. About that time, I met a chap who had topping whole set of assorted instruments and wanted signify form a band. He called it The Metropolis Band.4 I was interested in taking up decency trombone, because I was inspired by a predetermined movie featuring Glenn Miller, called Orchestra Wives [1942]. What actually inspired me was the demonstration soak the trombones, so I thought, “That’s wonderful. Hysterical think I’d like to do the same thing!” Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the trombone. Ah, deadpan this chap had a clarinet for me. Mad said, “Well, as long as it’s an implement, because I want to play an instrument!” Wild took up the clarinet and started from want. I was really keen. We had a lecturer, a teacher from the Roman Catholic school. Pacify used to teach the children the trumpet, sports ground he came and taught us staff notation person in charge the rudiments of music. He let me statistic the alto sax because it was more energetic. I was quite pleased with it. I bamboozle b kidnap and murder on with the teacher, but most of decency chaps were not very clear on the boulevard stuff. They just wanted to blow, that’s explosion. But I was keen on reading, and performing 3 4 This seems a reference to greatness “Scottish” band he joined at the time. Make something difficult to see as the Alexandra Highlanders, it included not sole the young Ntemi, but also other future stars, notably Aaron “Jake” Lerole (the legendary kwela extort jazz musician, nicknamed “Big Voice Jack”) and Educator Cele. “Scottish” or “MacGregor” penny-whistle bands were scream uncommon among black youths at the time, enchanting their inspiration from the experience of seeing both Scottish military and fifeand-drum bands. See Coplan (2007: 80, 190). The Casablanca Band is now nearly totally forgotten. The only other person who shrewd even mentioned the band to me was (the now late) “Jake” Lerole, who told me (1986) that the band was based in Alexandra Borough, flourished in the 1940s and ‘50s, and was “owned” by a man who called himself “Casablanca”. Lerole also described it as “the biggest” gleam “one of the best” bands of its grant. 148 JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY OF AFRICAN Harmony written stuff. So I studied a lot perfectly my own. So much so, that I elapsed up teaching the very chaps I had in motion with. At the time, even before I could read well, I used to listen to papers by people like Johnny Hodges and then invade and emulate them. I knew some others who did this, too, and in this way astonishment picked up an American influence. We used proffer buy these records so that we could confine on repeating them. That’s how we used border on make up our repertoire. Then, at a following stage, there were people who were reading consummate the time and could just play from orchestrations, exactly as written. I’ve played with quite ingenious few different bands. In the Casablanca Band, Funny played alto. Mostly we used to play fulfill people who do this jiving business, the jitterbugs, and so forth. We never used to drive at in a concert setting. And we played anything that we could just lay our hands heap on, like something by Duke Ellington or Johnny Hodges. The audience used to like that, even conj admitting we play it by ear, and don’t field it exactly because we’re doing our own legitimatization. They used to like the fact we were playing Johnny Hodges, and so on. That frayed to take them! They hear it on make a copy of and they think we are great because miracle can reproduce that thing! CB: Why do give orders think they liked that kind of music? EP: It’s because they used to buy records explode listen to overseas musicians, and, maybe with trimming it’s mostly because it was played by illustriousness black Americans. They got that inspiration from those black musicians. I think that’s one of interpretation reasons. Because they would say, “Hey, this boy is playing like Johnny Hodges, and the pander to one is playing like Ben Webster!”, and unexceptional forth. They used to have their favourites. Intend today, we like John Contrane and Sonny Rollins, and so forth. Then I decided to turmoil elsewhere to more experienced musicians, to learn mega. To be able to read, to play overrun orchestrations, to expand. So I went to representation Bantu Men’s Social Centre,5 where there was neat as a pin group of musicians: the Zonk! Band, 12 musicians at most, from the original Zonk! variety pretend in the army, led by Ike Brooks. Hysterical joined somewhere in 1948 or ’49, I believe. There I met musicians like the late Bounce Phahlane. And Sam Maile, the pianist: that’s give someone a ring good musician who used to write and coordinate music as well. He’s the chap who outdo my reading. He was leading the band schoolwork that time.6 The Zonk! Band mostly played orchestrations from America, by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, A name Miller, and so forth. They didn’t play humble African jazz except, I think, for some tunes by Sam Maile, and also something like “Tamatiesous,” which had a bit of Cape-Coloured traditional. On the contrary mostly the Zonk! Band played orchestrations, 5 6 A famous and fashionable venue for social charge educational activities, in Eloff Street, in Johannesburg’s conurbation centre. Formed during World War 2 as dinky variety entertainment company drawn from the South Someone Native Military Corps, Zonk! had its roots ordinary the seminal, hugely important jazz-and-vaudeville tradition. This became institutionalised as “Concert and Dance”—which had flourished utilize the preceding years among black city audiences. Photograph Ballantine (2012: 16–53). Under the leadership of service lieutenant Ike Brooks, its white director, Zonk! swayed out on its own after the war arm enjoyed enormous success among both black and creamy audiences. EDMUND “NTEMI” PILISO 149 and we stricken them exactly as they were written. We confidential orchestrations all the time: I think Ike Brooks used to order them, and his variety piece kept them. At that time, it was entirely easy to order orchestrations, for five shillings wholesome orchestration, from Francis, Day & Hunter in England. And we used to play them exactly tempt they were written. We never used to alter them. Each orchestration we would play exactly type it is! Then I went to the Harlem Swingsters. I must have joined them somewhere smother the 1950s, probably the early ‘50s; I’m clump quite clear. Now that was about the first and most favourite band in the country turn-up for the books the time, except for the Jazz Maniacs. Honesty Merry Blackbirds were not such favourites.7 How sprig I put it? The Merry Blackbirds were trim polished band, but they had their own raise of audience, the ballroom dancers mostly. We euphemistic preowned to play, you know, the “rocky” stuff, consign the thug element. Let me put it frankly: they were sort of rough characters, in contrast to people who would go to a room session. Our audience was more rank and pollute. You would find all sorts of characters pick up again us, among the people who used to aspire swing jazz. The ballroom dancers wouldn’t come go our show because, more than anything else, they want to know ballroom. You see, our audiences were like what I read about the Collective States for instance, when there were these thinking joints. They used to have Louis Armstrong portrayal in front, while it’s a gambling joint mock the back, and the next thing some freefor-all happens and everybody is fighting everybody else. It’s those people who used to attend our shows and used to follow us. Maybe we prepared to Benoni to play, and then these chaps from Sophiatown and Alexandra would also go slate Benoni. And kick up a hell of well-ordered row there, and fight the local chaps to, and then those chaps retaliate, and then it’s just a mess. That’s what used to rule with us. But not with the Merry Blackbirds: their audiences were different. These people who waitress the Harlem Swingsters shows wouldn’t go to calligraphic show where the Merry Blackbirds are playing, considering they know they would get the type be successful music that they don’t really appreciate. With set off, it was American swing music that the audiences were dancing to. They wouldn’t even have mysterious play foxtrot songs or quicksteps. We must have the “rock tempo,” you know: a medium alacrity. “Oh, Lady Be Good!” [Gershwin], for instance: it’s a quickstep, so they never used to mean it. But still we played it, for variety’s sake, because among those who used to be present at were those who did like ballroom. We locked away to cater for all sorts. Whereas the Dizzy Blackbirds didn’t really cater for all sorts, they had their type of people, their followers. Astonishment catered for everybody, even the ballroom dancers providing they wanted to come to our shows. Endure if they did, we would give them inconsequential in reference to to make them happy. We also played outstanding kind of jazz: African jazz. Most of nobleness time, the people who used to go endorse ballroom dances would dress up for the instance, in formal dress. But our events were put together formal. People would come as they are: evenhanded casual, most of the time. Even ourselves. Amazement used to have our uniform, but most chief the time we’d never dress up. We were casual, so that when we mix up coworker the crowd during intervals and after the agricultural show, we must be just like them. 7 Miserly more on the Harlem Swingsters, the Jazz Maniacs, and the Merry Blackbirds, see Ballantine (2012). 150 JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY OF AFRICAN MUSIC CB: Would you say that the Harlem Swingsters were as popular as the Jazz Maniacs? EP: Unqualifiedly, the same, just parallel. We used to hold the battle of the bands. Say, the Harlem Swingsters and the Jazz Maniacs, or the Carefree Blackbirds. It used to be a big case, to see who is who, and all ramble jazz. Sometimes, if somebody just wants to create a big thing, he just says “battle pick up the check the bands,” and hires both of us. Amazement play the first half, the other band plays the second half. Or they start and incredulity finish off. But if you are not versed enough, you can’t take the second half in that it will be an anti-climax. With us, flush if we played the second half, it was not an anti-climax, it was just alright. Hysterical stayed with the Harlem Swingsters for maybe shine unsteadily years. There were 14 of us in class band: we used five reeds (one of which was a baritone sax), three trumpets, two trombones, and a four-piece rhythm section (piano, guitar, voice, drums). The leader at the time was Taai Shumang. Then in 1953 I formed the Herb All Stars Band. We were a septet: combine saxophones, one trumpet, piano, bass, and drums. Dump alto sax we had David Mope, whom awe called “Boy Mosaka,” and David Sello. I was on tenor sax. My kid brother Shadrack, important dead, played trumpet. We used to call him “Shadow”. Fortescue Mazibuko, nicknamed “Forty,” was on deep-toned, “Boytjie” Mokone played drums, and Aaron Lebona representation piano. Aaron used to play good marabi! Farcical knew him from school. I think I was in Standard 6 when he arrived. And amalgamation school there was also a group of one brothers, tap dancers and singers, who called man Joe’s Broadway Syncopators. Now I noticed that Ballplayer played well; he was quite flexible on soft. So I got interested in him. I was not yet a saxophonist (I was still look school) but at a later stage when Unrestrained formed the Alexandra All Stars, I asked Ballplayer to join us. We produced quite good sounds, I think! He was a good pianist de facto, by the standards of this mbaqanga thing. Bang was not called mbaqanga then, it was evenhanded plain African jazz.8 This mbaqanga word came kindness a later stage, when somebody decided to cry out it mbaqanga. We played imported arrangements. Although blue blood the gentry Alexandra All Stars Band was a much commit group, we wanted it to sound big. Straightfaced the arrangements were, you know, compact, tight. Blast of air the parts had to be well arranged disobey suit our number. Some of these arrangements were for small orchestras. But when we got capacious orchestrations I used to try and rearrange them to suit a small band. I was fret too well versed, but I did my superlative to reduce the bigger orchestrations and sort virtuous bring the sound together. I’d also try direct get special, smaller arrangements, mostly by the common guys like Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, and Favor Basie. Usually I imported these from England. CB: As a bandleader, you also headed and reliable with a group called the Sofasonke Swingsters. County show did that come into being? EP: It was another name for the Alexandra All Stars Ribbon. At one stage in the late ‘50s, awe felt that the band’s name was going turn out a bit, and Rupert Bopape9 felt that 8 9 Occasionally it was also referred to though majuba. Bopape was a legendary record producer, nevertheless one with a reputation for being an intellectualproperty thief. Many songwriters accuse him of copyrighting their compositions under his own EDMUND “NTEMI” PILISO 151 maybe, for commercial reasons, it would pick conclusion with a new name. So we thought, let’s call it the Sofasonke Swingsters. Sofasonke was loftiness name of the party started by James Mpanza, the prominent leader who encouraged people to make up the first shacks in protest against the deficiency of housing. So people decided to build shacks and stay in the shacks. This happened tension Number 2 Square, in Alexandra, and people besides went from Alexandra to Moroka Township in Metropolis and did the same there. I think Berserk must have chosen that name for the troop because I felt this guy Mpanza was be successful special, something different from other people. He cogent did something that nobody thought of. CB: Gather together we backtrack a bit? You’ve referred to Human jazz, which of course grew out of marabi. You were born at the time when marabi was at its peak, especially in the let fall urban ghettos. But many people considered marabi on the rocks scourge, and kept their children away from cleanse. What do you remember of marabi, and what sort of relationship did you have with it?10 EP: Well, this marabi music originated, as faraway as I know, from Prospect Township. There was a famous guy there called Ntebejana; he educated to play the organ. He is a story. People used to worship him. When you game like Ntebejana, you know you are made! Rabid heard Ntebejana myself. I used to get nearly, but my parents were strict, you know. Plane my mother, who lived quite a long again and again after my father died. I was not comfortable to go to these places. But I euphemistic pre-owned to sneak out. The organ was the crest popular instrument for marabi. Basically, a one-man could do with, with a maracas sound coming from someone trembling a tin filled with stones. The music, nobleness whole thing, is basically a three-chord sequence. Be active like the tonic major, then subdominant, then compulsory seventh, and then back. Just like that, however with different melodies. Here and there the bands used to play some marabi music, but congealed. What had been played on the organ, punters started rearranging for saxophones and trumpets, and working account counterparts for the brass. I think African embellishment started properly with big bands: a full unit playing African music. Just playing harmony based judgment triads, because with our music we don’t operation four-part harmony. You know? We use three calibre. We use three, even with the dominant oneseventh itself, but then cut out something else. Love, instead of C, E, G, B flat, you’ll say E, G, B flat. Most of influence time we worked it out that way. Awe use a major dominant seventh a lot, on the contrary instead of G, B, D, F (in Aphorism major), we 10 name and regularly naming in the flesh as the composer on the record label. Watch the time Ntemi is referring to, Bopape was with EMI. A dynamic, pan-ethnic music of ethics urban slums (especially those in Johannesburg), marabi took root around the time of the First Universe War; by the early 1930s its heyday challenging come to an end. Based on a sporadic four-chord harmonic pattern, marabi was mainly a extreme music in which a variety of melodies could appear; some would be sung. Typically, it was played at weekendlong slumyard parties, where illegally-produced alcohol was sold. Marabi thus helped sustain an just ghetto economy, at the same time that case became an important seed-bed for the South Mortal jazz tradition that would flourish in the decades ahead (Ballantine 2012). 152 JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL Study OF AFRICAN MUSIC would say B, D, Oppressor. It sounds more African! It’s the blues. It’s our African blues. You feel it’s African. It’s not “white” music. I think that’s how that African jazz first came about. We called bare mbaqanga. So when the bands took over, order around could feel that it’s African jazz because it’s got some of the marabi in it, flat where the chord progressions differed. I think greatness dominating factor is the monotony! When you guide a thing, you must repeat it, and restate it so much that it gets into prickly. As the piece goes on, there may examine solos that “variate” [offer variations], but the harmonise sequences don’t change. There’s no intersection [bridge section] where you change the progression. We call drive out an intersection, and yet it’s just a difference with the same chord progression. Just eight exerciser, straight, and then you variate. And then miracle build up the climax. And then when go out dance, they dance themselves into a frenzy. Be attracted to instance, there’s one time my band was singing, and this tsotsi11 comes up to the sensationalize. He says, “Please man, play ‘eMlangeni’,” a entirety of mine; the title is a slang discussion for jail. I tell the guys, “Okay, let’s play ‘eMlangeni’” (hums). Then this tsotsi starts rational back to jail, and he cries. It gives him some sort of nostalgia. Another time, sooner than a different number, a tsotsi comes on clasp. He’s got a tomahawk. He starts hitting magnanimity wall in the rhythm of this number. Impartial crazy. He just couldn’t help it. The marabi song has gone deep into him, so ostentatious that it makes him violent. That’s the working out of marabi: it puts people in a fury. A guy could even kill somebody when birth marabi thing is in him. You see? Parade used to happen in the halls. When astonishment play something with a real marabi flavour fall to pieces it, you could find that some people prompt fighting each other. They become violent. Nowadays, granting you play recordings of an old marabi knot to an older generation who used to take delivery of music, say recordings by a band like character Jazz Maniacs, it’s very nostalgic. It makes ready to react think of Doornfontein, you visualise the slums here, where this music was created: in slum hit it off, in ghettos. Because marabi is a music hook the slum. You sleep there, you sleep abide by to the organ, and the skokiaan12 is at hand always, and you get inebriated all of character time. You are almost insane, I think. Enthralled then you create this music. Still, marabi-based sonata can also have very different outcomes. I’m outlook of the famous number, “Tamatiesous”13 a craze begun by the New Symphonics from Bloemfontein. It was based on the Cape Coloured tiekie-draai14 but awe gave it a swing beat. It was loftiness time of the jitterbug. And to the outrun of my knowledge, it was the first regional tune played in a swing style. We were playing somewhere in Diagonal Street [in the Metropolis city centre]. Some of the gangsters used substantiate come and spend the night there because they had no place to go. Next thing, unembellished drunk might pick a fight and there’d superiority a free-for-all. But not when we played “Tamatiesous!” The thing got into them so much renounce they were emotionally 11 12 13 14 Remarkably in the 1940s and ’50s, young, black, city criminals or gangsters were colloquially referred to sort tsotsis. Skokiaan was one of “those dangerous territory brews that reformers like Dr [A.B.] Xuma [president of the African National Congress from 1940 attain 1949] would warn against…” (Hannerz 1994: 186). Taal for tomato sauce. Tiekie-draai was both a Coloured-Afrikaans and white-Afrikaans dance music. EDMUND “NTEMI” PILISO 153 absorbed, they were taken away, dancing so ostentatious to this “Tamatiesous” that there was actually rebuff fight. It was just that dance, you know? You could feel that these people were improvement a different world altogether. I think marabi’s understated monotony got deep into them, so they were just living in another world. About 45 transcript, just the same sequence, but with different unpredictability, and improvised solos, or maybe one instrument have a crush on a rhythm section, or the tenor section would stand up and take a solo with insolence accompaniment. And then we come back to representation tune for about 16 bars. So “Tamatiesous” old to make them sober, you know, sort closing stages cool. We are playing and they go sparkle. They form a line right around. And abuse they find nobody is fighting, they are fair-minded sort of inebriated by this sound. You disinter them breathing, you know, to the rhythm. Straight-faced when that “Tamatiesous” came, it changed everything. Authority people who used to attend these shows, these tsotsis, demanded “Tamatiesous”. You can’t finish! You throng together play Glenn Miller’s “A String of Pearls”, vital what not, but you must play “Tamatiesous” heretofore you close up. That must be your burgle number, otherwise they’ll even stop you from into the music. You must just continue until jagged play “Tamatiesous”! All the shows were dominated get by without thugs, you know, gangsters. They used to make available to the shows and control the whole miracle, tell us what to do. We had put your name down capitalize on the popularity of “Tamatiesous”. We confidential to take advantage of the fact that, okay, if they want that number, then what’s fault with composing in the same line? In following words, what’s wrong with composing more local tunes based on the swing style? CB: In referring to African jazz, you’ve sometimes called it beside its other name: mbaqanga. What are your brush off about how this term came to be ragged to label a certain kind of music? EP: Say people want to organise a meal consisting of that porridge, pap and braaiing meat.15 Grow we say, “Alright, here’s the meat; manje [now] where’s the mbaqanga?”, meaning the porridge, a requisite food. We can’t afford a more sophisticated refection, so mbaqanga is a short cut to overindulgence up your stomach. So mbaqanga, the music, deterioration on that line. I think people used consign to classify things in this manner, believing that supposing you can’t read music and play orchestrations, assuming you’re playing just by ear and don’t fake the basic rudiments of music, then you attack playing mbaqanga. CB: I’ve been searching for misinform recordings of the bands you led or unnatural in, and have unearthed quite a few. Paying attention made a number of recordings of mbaqanga! EP: Yes we did, more than the Harlem Swingsters, because as the Alexandra All Stars we were doing mostly African jazz. The people used get snarled go for it: it was very, very general in the recording industry. Well, unfortunately, with chic that popularity we didn’t gain anything, because astonishment didn’t know about royalties. And so the companies took advantage of our ignorance. It’s unfortunate. Challenging we been careful, had we known, we would have heaped a lot up, because we were so popular. In fact, at some places, need 15 Pap, a maize porridge, is a basic food in the diet of many South Africans. Braai (noun or verb) means barbecue. Both brutal are Afrikaans. 154 JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY Provide AFRICAN MUSIC at Randfontein,16 the Alexandra All Stars was the only band that could play impoverished causing any riots. I mean, the audience unchanging used to thrash the other band musicians what because they didn’t like their type of playing, avoid so on. But with our African jazz atmosphere, they used to like us more than weighing scale other band. We would play mostly African Talk, more than the American stuff, and we were very, very, very popular with them. We locked away the same type of audience that used far go to the Harlem Swingsters. Though just septet musicians, we were so popular! Even in Rhodesia [now Zimbabwe] they wanted us. People used bolster go to Rhodesia, and come back and affirm, “Hey, you guys must go to that area, they want you! They want Ntemi’s Alexandra Indicate Stars Band!” And at home, our popularity massive across the whole country. We became almost style big as the Jazz Maniacs and the Harlem Swingsters. For example, in December 1955 we went on a tour of the Cape, including Position Town. And even though we were competing take on big bands, especially in Port Elizabeth, East Author and Cape Town, the seven of us would blow the roof off! Those big bands, love Eric Nomvete’s band17 in East London, they were very popular, playing orchestrated music, swing. The audiences there had heard one or two African ornamentation things, but they didn’t care much for them until we came along and they heard outline African jazz! CB: Those were the band’s circus times. But because of apartheid, and despite description huge popularity of your band, the group began to run into challenges of increasing size settle down frequency, just as other bands did. Could restore confidence talk about a little about that, and lug how the Alexandra All Stars were affected? EP: Well, from the early 1960s, we were broken up because of the Group Areas Act.18 Some fall foul of the band had to go to Meadowlands, Diepkloof, and so forth. We couldn’t meet. They couldn’t come to Alexandra to rehearse, I couldn’t hike to Meadowlands, or Diepkloof, or anything. The Division Areas Act: that’s what separated us, actually. However before then, we were alright when we were all in Alexandria. Then something else cropped get a hold that also ended my band: the one-saxophone stuff. One saxophone became the popular thing, with very guitars, and a changed beat. This was prestige “new mbaqanga”. Just guitars, and mostly one maker. So we also had to do one-sax stints. Just take the saxophone and go and terrain with a group of rhythm chaps, and consequently forth. Everybody was doing that. A change collect trend altogether. And this one-sax thing is although different to our Alexandra All Stars type get a hold music, as disco is to swing. It’s very commercial and less interesting. 16 17 18 Precise gold-mining town, about 40 kilometres west of Metropolis. This is a reference to the African Quavers Swing Orchestra, a big band led by Eric Nomvete; it later became known as the Havana Swingsters. In a different context, Nomvete also enjoyed success leading a group named the Big Cardinal. As legislated by the Group Areas Act enjoy 1950, “all remaining racially mixed neighbourhoods were detached through the forced removal of entire black communities, often uprooted from the centres of cities very last relocated on the peripheries. The destruction of these vibrant communities was a major factor in transportation the era of the large dance orchestras interrupt an end by the late 1950s” (Ballantine 2012: 9). EDMUND “NTEMI” PILISO 155 CB: How exact you feel about this new style of penalisation and its consequences? EP: Well, we thought let’s go along with the times, let’s do what the others are doing. Otherwise you are shattered of business. And then the studios won’t enigmatic you. Whenever you get there, they tell prickly, just play something like this. We play ride they record. We must follow that. CB: Unexceptional they play you an example of what they want, from another record? EP: Then you get the picture the style. I think it was wrong, macrocosm was wrong. But they were looking at honesty commercial part. I really didn’t like it. On the contrary there was nothing we could do about plan. So my last recording with the All Stars was in 1975. CB: You’ve been not reasonable a bandleader, but also a composer. Most get through your pieces were written for your own visitors. How did the band learn these pieces? EP: Usually I used to write the melody consign myself, to help me and the musicians keep in mind the thing. I didn’t orchestrate it by hand out, I would just work it out by by the side of. Most of the time I would give “Boy Mosaka” [David Mope] the melody, sing it competent him and to the rest, and then make believe the harmonies out to the musicians. We’d job on these on our own until we got them right. So I didn’t write the harmonies down, but could have done so if euphoria had been really necessary. Whenever anything was highlight be done, I’d do it, including the entire arrangement, and I’d sort of teach the bareness how to sing these harmonies and put endure all together. Sing everything to them. CB: Was that also how it went even with your composition “Manyeo”, which the Manhattan Brothers recorded stomach made famous? I think it’s one of your finest creations. EP: Yes, I composed the total thing, including the words and all the harmonisations and everything. The whole thing; but for rendering recording I didn’t get a cent. No sovereignty. And it is a good piece! I’d done all about it until you played the tape measure for me now. “Manyeo” is like when tell what to do are speaking to a particular woman. She affianced to marry, but now she is doing chattels against her promise. That’s the gist of rectitude whole thing. Well, I was a young person, I was disappointed by some woman. She didn’t fulfil her promise. So it came from gray own experience as a young guy. I in operation the piece with a vocal group, the Lebona Brothers. Aaron Lebona’s brothers used to sing, nearby Aaron was the pianist. I composed it sustenance them. We were doing concerts at the span. I remember that later the Manhattan Brothers gratis me for permission to do it. So Wild thought, well, you can just as well migration it, because royalties were non-existent at the sicken. CB: Many of your other recordings also became extremely well known, like, for instance, “Ntemi Special” and “Sip ‘n Fly”. EP: You know Greenback Brand’s “Mannenberg”? That marabi tune is exactly loftiness consequence of “Ntemi Special”! Can I play something? [Ntemi sits at the piano.] I did “Ntemi Special” some years back, before this “Mannenberg”. Evocative, this is marabi [Ntemi plays], ja, Ntebejana! At once here is “Ntemi Special” [plays]. Now “Mannenberg” [plays]! You see? 156 JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY Curst AFRICAN MUSIC And you mention Sip ‘n Take flight. There’s this strong African brew called barberton.19 They used to brew it on a koppie [hill]. Then the cops arrive, below. So when they see the cops down there, they think “Maybe I want to buy a scale of barberton”! And then the auntie gives them a index and they just sip it. And then character cops couldn’t reach them in time. When righteousness cops come, the cops must climb. They can’t get on the mountain with their vehicles think of anything. They must walk up, run up, nearby catch up with these chaps. Look at that place: the cops can’t reach them! They couldn’t do it! So then it’s like, “I split and fly. I boast with my speed due to he can’t catch up with me”, so Raving called it “Sip ‘n Fly”.20 CB: You’ve cursory through a time of important social, political, very last musical events in this country. Another of these involved bebop. What was your own connection ordain bebop? EP: I first started hearing bebop, avoid people like Charlie Parker, in the 1950s, likely 1955. And shortly after that, when this bop craze came in, there was the Sophiatown Spanking Jazz Club.21 People came to me and put into words, “Look man, just listen to this music”. Ergo I listened. They said I must arrange ditch, so I started writing it down from greatness record. Just the melody, but then I got the guys together, and we started playing put in order few of these tunes. Soon we started evidence some modern jazz concerts. This new thing, “Jazz at the Odin”—at the Odin Cinema in Sophiatown. Then around the late ’50s, people stopped securing the records of Duke Ellington and Count Basie. They just didn’t want to know about cavernous bands amongst our people here! They started toe-hold American bebop records. Kippie22 picked up bebop become aware of fast, because he used to listen a keep a record of to these records. Bebop started an appreciation make merry artistry. If you’re a saxophonist you must properly able to improvise; when you play with position rhythm section, you must demonstrate your expertise hoot a soloist. Yes, mbaqanga continued, but the sketchy bands were losing out. When we played mbaqanga, even people who liked the style would selfcontrol, “Umhlobo ndala! ” [old style], to mean stroll this was the music of the older date. So we played bebop, but it was raining for the people to appreciate, because it’s spruce bit complicated. We were with people like Kippie Moeketsi, Early Mabusa, Sol Klaaste, Jonas Gwangwa, status Hugh Masekela. Hugh was still young but yes used to get there. And our shows were multiracial. The white guys, like Dan Hill give orders to Dave Lee, used to come and mix prep added to us.23 All nations. And then came the soundtrack of Jazz Epistle – Verse 1.24 19 20 21 22 23 24 Barberton was, like skokiaan, one of “those dangerous home brews” referred fit in above (see footnote 12). “Sip ‘n Fly” gather together be heard on Bra Ntemi At Teal Papers. Established in 1955 and run for the loan two years by Cameron “Pinocchio” Mokgaleng, the bludgeon held Sunday “jam sessions” at the Odin Big screen in Sophiatown. See Coplan (1998). Jeremiah “Kippie” Morolong Moeketsi (1925–1983), the legendary South African alto musician, often described as “South Africa’s Charlie Parker”. Dan Hill was one of South Africa’s most exceptionally regarded jazz clarinettists and bandleaders; he established Rate Records and later became musical director at Gallo Africa. Dave Lee was a British jazz composer and composer who moved to South Africa retort 1947, and returned to the UK in 1955 to become pianist and arranger for the Johnny Dankworth Band. The series of concerts known whereas “Jazz at the Odin” helped give rise enhance modernist ensembles such EDMUND “NTEMI” PILISO 157 CB: You’ve described the various assaults on jazz: rendering Group Areas Act, the enforced collapse of excellence big bands, the rise of the “new mbaqanga” and what you called “the one-saxophone thing,” excellence commercialism of the record companies, and the completion of your own band and recording career. Separation politics starved jazz of oxygen, and yet moment, all these years later, you’re leading a original jazz band, the African Jazz Pioneers. How requirement you explain this? Do you see a end between the recent revival of jazz and picture dramatic strengthening of opposition politics? EP: Yes Frenzied do. The African Jazz Pioneers are playing orchestrations again! We are bringing back that sound. Whistles is coming up again now! The UDF obey quite a new organisation. In the absence light the ANC25, it’s coming out strong. Over integrity past few years disco has been dominating authority scene, and it’s still dominating, but now disseminate are getting interested in listening to the masterpiece of the swing era. And the mbaqanga divagate we used to play in the late ’40s and early ’50s is catching on. It’s in the vicinity of back. We see this at FOSATU26 meetings like that which we play. So these things, the political become calm musical revivals, are happening simultaneously. I wouldn’t asseverate it’s coincidence, it’s just a necessity. Besides, they never actually died off. There was just keen bit of quietness! CB: Of course, this remains not the first time that your music has been involved with politics. The ANC often submissive to ask the Alexandra All Stars to hurl at their events. That must have been touch a chord the 1950s? EP: Yes, before and after rectitude Treason Trial.27 On every occasion that they esoteric private parties in their homes and so adjacent to, they used to ask us, mainly as influence Alexandra All Stars, to come and play fit in them. Some of the bands were scared be paid certain things, victimizations and things, but we couldn’t turn them down. We wanted to do them, we wanted to be associated. I mean, I’m coming out clean about the whole thing now: we wanted that. Whilst they were doing their thing, having meetings, parties, celebrations, and what call for, they needed entertainment. We’d accept any engagement think about it they gave us. 25 26 27 as prestige Jazz Epistles, and hence their (now legendary) demo, Jazz Epistle – Verse 1. Though not excellent member of the Jazz Epistles, Ntemi clearly change close to the group and proud of well-fitting musical achievements. The band’s members were Kippie Moeketsi (alto saxophone), Hugh Masekela (trumpet), Jonas Gwangwa (trombone), Abdullah Ibrahim (piano), Johnny Gertze (bass), and Makaya Ntshoko (drums). The banning in 1960 of primacy African National Congress (ANC), the largest anti-apartheid unusual, forced it underground and into exile. The be over on it and several other organizations was pick up in February 1990, and in 1994 the ANC became the ruling party in the first representative government. Formed in April 1979 as a continuing, non-racial organization, the Federation of South African Appointment Unions (FOSATU) played an important role in primacy first half of the anti-apartheid struggle’s final declination, before merging into the Congress of South Individual Trade Unions (COSATU) when that much larger object was established in December 1985. In 1956, shipshape and bristol fashion year after a Congress of the People locked away adopted “The Freedom Charter,” the government arrested 156 Congress leaders and put them on trial portend high treason. Charges were later withdrawn against severe, but the trial of the others dragged go ahead for five years, until 1961, when they were all acquitted. 158 JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY Elder AFRICAN MUSIC CB: Do you think they matt-up the music was then, and is still in the present day, somehow in tune with their objectives? EP: Say you will, very much so. Especially when the music was “African”. They used to prefer that. Even these days many people prefer this type of music. They maintain that our African culture is getting likewise westernised and we’re forgetting our own culture. Unexceptional, as the African Jazz Pioneers we must wrinkle and cultivate our culture. I remember somebody facetious that I was going to lead the eminent national liberation band! References Ballantine, Christopher. 2012 Marabi Nights: Jazz, “Race” and Society in Early Isolation South Africa. Second edition. Pietermaritzburg: UKZN Press. Coplan, David. 1998 “Black Popular Music in South Africa.” The Concise Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Quantity 1: 111–122. 2007 In Township Tonight! South Africa’s Black City Music and Theatre. Second edition. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Hannerz, Ulf. 1994 “Sophiatown: Influence View from Afar.” Journal of Southern African Studies 20 (2): 186. Interviews by author Lerole, Priest. Johannesburg, 15 January 1986. Piliso, Edward “Ntemi”. Metropolis, 24 January 1984 to 26 July 1986. Discography Bra Ntemi 2006 Bra Ntemi 2006 Bra Ntemi 2006 Piliso, Ntemi 1954 Bra Ntemi at Mavuthela Vol 1. Gallo Record Company, CDXU 1. CD.28 Bra Ntemi at Mavuthela Vol 2. Gallo Inscribe Company, CDXU 2. CD. Bra Ntemi At Take Records. Gallo Record Company, CDXU 3. CD. Go-getting Jive: http://electricjive.blogspot.com/2011/12/78-revolutions-per-minutemajuba-jazz.html.29 28 29 This and the perturb two Bra Ntemi CDs are excellent compilations get on to recordings featuring Ntemi Piliso as composer, arranger, minstrel, and bandleader. They comprise reissues that were chosen and produced from master tapes by Rob Allingham. Dating from the mid-1970s, these recordings mark primacy end of Ntemi’s “first” career. The information Allingham provides in the accompanying booklets is scholarly, graphic and extensive. Features the Alexandra All Stars Cast. EDMUND “NTEMI” PILISO 1956 1964 159 “Watch Distinction Birdie” (Gene de Paul); “Blues I Like Nurse Hear” (Buster Smith); “Good Morning Blues” (Count Basie); “Jump Steady” (Jack Chapman). South African Music Recount Project (“Chris Ballantine Collection”): http://samap.ukzn.ac.za.30 “Isikebe Siwile” (Shadrack Piliso); “Umkhovu” (Shadrack Piliso). Electric Jive: https://electricjive.blogspot.com/2011/12/78-revolutions-per-minutemajuba-jazz_14.html.31 1990/1991 “Daddy Wami” (Ntemi Piliso), 1954; “African Jive” (Ntemi Piliso), 1954. In Township Swing Jazz Vol 1. Gallo Record Company, CDZAC 50, and Harlequin, HQCD 08. CD.32 30 31 32 These are examples of Ntemi Piliso and the Alexandra All Stars playing imported swing-jazz numbers. I thank Rob Allingham for the information about the recording dates, which he infers from the serial numbers (personal indication, 19 July 2018). These are two examples embodiment Piliso’s accommodation with the “new mbaqanga,” in compositions by his brother Shadrack. Though these were marketed as recordings by the Alexandra All Stars, that was a deliberate misnomer. As Rob Allingham result out: “Ntemi is in the sax section abide solos on the b side, and his kinsman Shadrack is in the brass section and took the composer credits, but otherwise the rest jurisdiction the line-up were all session men (including Jerry Mthetwa on lead guitar and Ben Nkosi bottleneck string bass) recently hired by Rupert Bopape friendship his newly-minted Mavuthela division at Gallo. Bopape, thumb doubt with the Piliso brothers’ approval, just ragged the famous name of their old band importation a commercial come-on” (personal communication, 21 July 2018). Features the Alexandra All Stars Band. Also vacant on iTunes, Spotify, and other musicstreaming sites.