A meeting of great musical minds

Monday night at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown saw the uniting of Ronald Snijders, considered the “most swinging flautist in The Netherlands”, and United States-born Salim Washington, tenor saxophonist and an educator with a doctorate on the music of John Coltrane.

It was a meeting of great musical minds.

Snijders is considered the inventor of African Surinam Kawina Jazz. He has a lively, imposing presence and was keen to include his polite audience in the ritual ceremony of the show. His ebullience found a balancing agent in the serene figure of Washington, who between belligerent, soaring blasts into his saxophone, weaved personal narratives about growing up in the home of a Pentecostal preacher in the US.

His father, he told the audience, still calls him “boy”—even though he himself has four children. One day, in frustrated tones, the younger Washington asked the elder Washington when he was going to be considered a man. The austere elder Washington told him he could only become a man when he was no more—when he was dead.

The audience was initially diffident, but when the show came to a close, most were clapping and humming along.

The two co-conspirators were supported on stage by drummer Kesivan Naidoo, Standard Bank Young Artist winner of this year’s award for Jazz; pianist Andile Yenana, who is in the process of setting up a music department at the University of Venda; and Marc Duby, a professor of music at Rhodes, on bass.

It was exhilarating, motley sounds weaving in and out of the souls of black folk from Africa; black folks in the Americas; an Indian in Africa; and a white man in Africa. When the performance was over, the audience bellowed for more.

I found it difficult to believe that these musicians had just met at the festival.