Mahluli Mngadi : In your ear
One of the most neglected groups in this country must be jazz lovers. Radio and television do not cater for them. If they dare complain they are told the same old myths: advertisers don?t like your type of music, we can only fit you in late at night when most normal people are asleep and, after all, you?re a tiny minority.
Then you can well imagine the excitement which greeted the launch of P4 Cape Town Radio, proud purveyors of smooth jazz. Phew! Praised be the people at local company Makana Trust who jointly own P4 with the Norwegian company P4 Radio Hele Forge. But the excitement was short-lived.
Smooth jazz and jazz as we know it appear to be distant cousins. Mary Crouch, P4?s roving international programme director, put me out of my misery. ?We?re not a jazz station. You can say P4 is new adult contemporary and smooth jazz is the format we use. We have our advertisers to think about.? Smooth jazz was very successful in the United States where it has been adopted by the fastest growing commercial radio stations.
This format is a mixture of instrumentals and vocals by fusion artists like David Sanborn, Kenny G, Spyro Gyra, The Yellowjackets and R?n?B singers like Toni Braxton, Whitney Houston and Tina Turner. If you expected to hear luminaries like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald ? sorry. What else do you get from P4 besides music for people who like the idea of jazz but don?t really like jazz?
Well-known deejays, including presenters Clarence Ford and James Lennox, Shado Twala and Mpho Mohapi. They are not well known for their high tolerance of straight-ahead jazz. And, like most local commercial stations, P4 carries news on the hour. It is the first station to use the smooth jazz format in this country.
Questions remain. Will the format work here? It might be a bit early to tell as P4 has been on the air for less than two months. All I know is that some Capetonians have a taste for music that demands their attention, while P4 seems to favour syrupy sounds.
Rashid Lombard, programme manager at P4, told me of listeners positive feedback. Perhaps Capetonians who prefer make-the- listener-think rather than keep-the-crowd- happy music, should try Fine Music Radio on FM101.3. But they should be prepared to wait until 10 in the evening for their fix. I don?t believe that P4 has any enemies, but its friends must be confused.
* P4is at 104.9FM in Cape Town and surrounds