Sounding a New African Diaspora: A South African Story (1958–1978)

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Notes

¹ McGregor, Chris McGregor, 104.

² Gilroy, The Black Atlantic.

³ Monson, African Diaspora.

⁴ Monson, Freedom Sounds.

⁵ Von Eschen, Race Against Empire.

⁶ Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World.

⁷ Okpewho and Nzegwu, The New African Diaspora;Hine and Patricia, Black Europe and the African Diaspora.

⁸ See Muller and Benjamin, Musical Echoes.

⁹  Drum Magazine, 46.

¹⁰ Muller and Benjamin, Musical Echoes; Rasmussen, Sathima Bea Benjamin.

¹¹ There are fourteen tracks in all on this recording, five have American attribution, and the rest are South African—three each by Moeketsi and Brand, one by Masekela, and two traditional African arrangements. Masekela's piece is titled “Dollar's Mood” and Dollar responds with “Blues for Hughie.” Moeketsi's “Scullery Department” references the racist treatment of black musicians in 1950s South Africa—at intermission, after they had entertained the white clientele they were sent to the kitchen or “scullery” to eat. On one occasion Brand and Moeketsi complained to the restaurant owner, who then organized a table for them in the main dining room to eat. This was an act in defiance of apartheid law.

¹² He recorded at the core commercial studios: Gallo, but according to discographer Tom Lord (“The Jazz Discography,” B739–B746) also released recordings under the labels of Soultown, Kazz, Giganti del Jazz, Europa, and Mandla, a mix of both South African and European labels.

¹³ There is a growing body of web-based archival material pertaining to South African jazz, and the Blue Notes are no exception. See for example, http://www.mfowler.myzen.co.uk/ a website titled: The Blue Notes, The South African Jazz Exiles. There is the ongoing creation of a South African audio archive, http://www.flatinternational.org/current.php intended to present a visual record of South African recording artifacts.

¹⁴ Gallo, “Cold Castle National Jazz Festival.”

¹⁵ Gallo, “Jazz-The African Sound.”

¹⁶ Personal conversation with Maxine McGregor, January 2012 in Grahamstown, South Africa.

¹⁷ See Muller and Benjamin, Musical Echoes, for further discussion of musical surrogacy and a new African diaspora.

¹⁸ McGregor, Chris McGregor and the Brotherhood of Breath, 216.

¹⁹ Run in parallel to the US “Democracy Tours” of jazz and gospel musicians to places threatened by communism, the Transcription Center was:funded by the Paris-based Congress for Cultural Freedom (itself a CIA front), and its official brief was to record interviews with African or Caribbean writers, artists, and intellectuals, in London and elsewhere. Recordings or transcripts of these interviews were to be made available to radio stations in Africa, the Caribbean, or anywhere else where interest in them was expressed … In practice, however, its activities under its director, Dennis Duerden, proved to be much wider than this: branching out into the making of television films, radio plays, and music recordings, or the sponsorship of art exhibitions, concerts, stage productions, and wide-ranging discussions of many contemporary topics. It became something of an informal club for all black artists visiting London and a powerhouse for many of their activities (Moore, “The Transcription Center in the Sixties,” 167).

²⁰ McGregor, Chris McGregor and the Brotherhood of Breath, comments that while the Musicians’ Union initially granted the group refugee status so they could play a two week gig at Ronnie Scott's new club, this kind of concession didn’t yield much for the musicians beyond the initial two weeks of work.

²¹ Abdullah Ibrahim to Rasmussen, Mbizo, 79.

²² Johnny Dyani to Ib Skovgaard, in Rasmussen, Mbizo, 234.

²³ Krotoa was a Khoisan woman who was an interpreter for Dutch settler Jan Van Riebeeck in the seventeenth century. Many Afrikaners claim her as an ancestor. Retrieved from http://carine-engelbrecht.suite101.com/the-pocahontas-of-southern-africa-a92050, February 29, 2012.

²⁴ Dollar Brand converted to Islam and traveled to Mecca in 1968–9, and changed his name to Abdullah Ibrahim at the same time.

²⁵ Rasmussen, Mbizo, 79.

²⁶ Ibrahim to Rasmussen, Mbizo, 79–80.

²⁷ See Muller and Benjamin, Musical Echoes, (Ch. 5) for further discussion of this repertory.

²⁸ Some have drawn a parallel between the cruelty of his death and that of Black Consciousness leader Steven Biko. Both came from Queenstown in the Eastern Cape, and died within a couple of years of each other—both unnecessarily, and far too young.

²⁹ Biko, I Write What I Like.

³⁰ Turner, The Eye of the Needle.