Introduction South African jazz started not long after the great explosion of the music in New Orleans more than 100 years ago – or it started long before then, depending on how you look at it. “Almost as soon as jazz went on record in America, in the early...
Back in those unenlightened, un-wired days of 1967, I and my then girl-friend used to attend art classes at the old Cape Town Art Centre on Greenpoint Common. And every Sunday evening there was a jam session there which we also often attended. One of the players at...
“If thou would’st view fair Melrose aright, Go visit it by the pale moonlight;” – from Canto Second of the “Lay of the Last Minstrel” by Sir Walter Scott. It is not really necessary (though not a bad idea either – though you...
On 10 May 2011 a musician described by the Johannesburg newspaper The Star as “The most visible, hardest working younger man in jazz” died of a stroke at the age of 52. A bitter loss to serious music lovers in South Africa. Born on 25 December 1959 Zim...
A scheme to provide employment to many otherwise unemployed people during the Great Depression of the late 1920s has developed into a wonderful nature reserve where zebras, birds, buck and vegetation abound in peace. The Rietvlei Dam Nature Reserve to the east of...
