The Revival Of Jazz In South Africa

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improvising an effective melody with the left. He would call for the aid of a matchstick to hold down a harmonic note. You get a delirious effect of perpetual motion -- perpetual motion in a musty hole where men made friends without restraint." (BEBEY-64)
This was marabi music, a foundation element of South African jazz and an indigenous product of the urban ghettoes that were a feature of South African cities for much of this century.(KEBEDE-40) Its distinctive rhythms, designed to bring some consolation and dignity to otherwise drab and oppressive working class districts, can still be heard in the music of jazz men and women who have today become giants in their field: Hugh Masekela, Abhudulla Ibrahim, Miriam Makeba and many others.(KEBEDE-47)
Many of these famous jazz artists have recently
returned from decades of exile. The repressive regulations that drove them away in the apartheid era have been abolished and broadcasting and recording opportunities are
open to ...

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from American jazz, especially the swing music of the big-band
O'CONNOR-4
era. Later still, the improvisational adventures of bebop were also drawn in.(GERARD-61)
But the chord progressions and improvisational style of marabi, together with excursions into the hexatonic mode of African choral singing continued to flavor the fusion and can still be heard in South African jazz today.(KEBEDE-133)
From its birth, it was dangerous music. It was performed at unregulated gatherings and drinking spots, rather than in the government-licensed and rigidly-controlled beer halls. Its practitioners were often classified as "vagrants", under constant threat of expulsion from the ...

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