/ 18 December 1998

The spirits rejoicing

Friday night: Shaun de Waal

Last Friday the charming Brad Holmes opened his Melville jazz club, the Bassline, in the late afternoon for the Mail & Guardian’s annual Christmas staff party. This was an informal bash – the Mail had only pocket money left after the office-warming of our new building earlier in the year. Management did, however, contribute some salvers of Nando’s chicken and other nibbly bits.

Gradually the staff gathered, filling the small tables clustered in the Bassline’s front room. A bit later, when the rain had spent itself, a smoking/chatting circle formed in the club’s back yard. Well into the night, this convivial space would still be occupied by people wetting their bums on the chairs that, like “Small Change” in the Tom Waits song, got rained on.

The back room is also a good space, with a set of couches, a coffee table and a rack of paper prayers (some frankly depicting floating penises heading dutifully for condoms) which can be acquired in exchange for a donation.

This area also seems to be the place the band of the evening uses to rest between sets. Certainly, Philip Tabane, who played at the Bassline that night, spent some time there with his Dr Malombo band members; he was using the downtime to make lists of numbers and words that looked like some esoteric code.

The great guitarist played three sets. They were relatively short, but the intensity of his performance made up for it. As his three cohorts – one of them his son – pattered and bounced away on various percussion instruments, he wove his utterly distinctive guitar figures around them. Part free jazz, part ancient Africa, his music is unique; and it comes across with the force of something driven by its own secret inner energies.

In tshiVenda, of course, “malombo” refers to the spirits, ancestral or otherwise. The drums themselves are malombo drums, used to commune with the shades, and Tabane’s music is so idiosyncratic that it is perhaps best described simply as malombo music. As the guitarist lost himself in his sinuous melodic lines, his body twisting with the sounds and his face contorting with concentrated joy, it was easy to believe some holy mystery was being celebrated.

The Bassline is a fine club, inclined to pack itself to the rafters when the more popular acts are on show. Everyone who is anyone in South African jazz – or on its margins – has played there at some time. Hopefully Holmes et al will soon organise some more recordings off their sound desk: adventurous South African artists like Tabane are woefully under-recorded (a mere handful in 30 years!), and such gigs could produce some marvellous CDs. The freedom of playing live, and the ambience of an appreciative audience, can make for brilliant music.

What the club does need, though, as a patron pointed out a few weeks ago when Zim Ngqawana was playing, is a piano. Just a sturdy old stand-up would do to relieve us of those often toneless electric keyboards.