Forget city-centre clubs. An innovative label is taking jazz back to the townships, reports GWEN ANSELL
LAUNCHING new music into South Africa’s notoriously conservative market isn’t easy. So, you ask youself, is the B&W label entirely sane to mix new music with an equally innovative marketing strategy?
Very much so, according to the label’s South African frontman, British-born Colin Charles. “South African music is headed to be one of the top world musics internationally. It should also be making it at home — the problem is that the music biz here still works through what are essentially apartheid structures.”
B&W’s South African stable stretches from the deep folk roots of Mandla Kunene and Dizu Plaatjies to the outright modernism of Moses Molelekwa and Zim Ngqawana, taking in veteran pioneers like Sipho Gumede and Pops Mohammed along the way. This week, the label launches a tour by Barungwa, an Anglo- African collaboration whose core comprises Molelekwa, vocalist Max Mntambo, UK drummer Andrew Missingham and reed-player Chris Bowden.
The group’s sound is grounded in club beats and Bowden’s fiercely “out” sax playing, melded with distinctively South African keyboard riffs and vocal lines. It labels itself “African futurist jazz” — but the effect, for those with memories long enough, is reminiscent of Malopoets: a reminder that all kinds of modernist intellectual seeds were sown back in the Black Consciousness era.
Barungwa’s tour is focusing on the townships; the main airplay for the album is coming from the community radio stations, and you’re likely to be offered the cassette by an independent seller working the township taxi ranks.
Charles justifies his approach: “There’s no chance for people living in the townships to get to hear new music. Travel to city-centre clubs is expensive and difficult in the evenings, and there are no well-stocked music shops in places like Alex and Orlando.”
With reference points in semiotics and linguistics, Charles compares the development of cultural trends to a viral takeover, with personal contact, example and word-of-mouth recommendation as the carriers. “A small start and sustained effort can make an impact in the communities where most people live. There’s a brilliant music audience out there that cuts across generations; incredibly well-informed, able to discuss styles and solos. It’s appalling that they’re so poorly served.”
There’s also, however, an element of needs-must in the B&W strategy, given the dismissive attitude of national radio DJs to new and not easily pigeon- holed musical styles. “If a track is longer than five minutes, and not on a station playlist, it’s hard to interest national DJs,” he says. “And I have to say that some DJs gave me the distinct impression they were looking for kickbacks before they’d consider our music.
“Whereas the community radio DJs understand African music, know what their audience like, and will play it. It’ll be tragic if commercial pressures push them towards the playlist approach in the future.”
And if the strategy doesn’t work? “Look, the music’s world-class. Its world sales demonstrate that. Part of the post-liberation trend has to be developing self-love for your own culture.”