Tony Cox talks to Adam Haupt about his new album and the integrity of music that ignores the pop charts
Tony Cox is one of those acoustic guitar trailblazers who began way before it was fashionable to create a uniquely South African sound. He first made a name for himself when he recorded 101 Ways to Use the Acoustic Guitar in the early 1980s with fellow guitar wizard and ”brother” Steve Newman.
Over the years Cox and Newman have managed to produce music that seems firmly rooted in Africa. Cox’s solo third album, Matabele Ants, is no exception in this regard. Innovative and creative gems such as Kwazulu, with its strong drum rhythms, and Sun Woman, with its Eastern overtones, bear testimony to Cox’s vast skills on the fret board.
Matabele Ants differs from his previous albums, Cool Friction and Waiting for Zim, because Cox does not employ an ensemble this time around. Instead, Barry van Zyl provides some accompaniment on percussion.
Cox remarks that the album contains ”pure guitar playing – it’s all guitar”, he says, ”whereas the other albums had horns, bass, drums, keyboards, pianos, voices, flutes, everything”.
Cox recalls that he originally wanted to make his debut album a ”pure” guitar album, but record companies were not particularly interested in the idea at the time.
His philosophy took him away from the influence of three years of classical training and American and European pop music. He became increasingly impressed with South African musicians: ”If you grow as a musician, then there’s only one way to go and that is to start looking closer to home. The older I became, the more I became exposed to South African musicians of any genre.” Having grown up in Zimbabwe, his ear was ”also tuned to the simple beauty of mbira playing or any one of the indigenous instruments”.
He explains that he discovered instrumental music. Cox sought out musicians who could make the guitar sound interesting and use it in a ”deeper way”. This quest led him to the realisation that the guitar ”could be played like a grand piano”. He was no longer interested in ”backing someone with chords or playing the odd lead riff”.
”If you search, you find a whole world of music that’s got nothing to do with any hit parade … You find an incredible integrity and love when you start looking there. You find music that exists for the sake of itself, not for the sake of the charts. And that is where I live right now. I consider my own music to be like that,” expounds Cox.
Catch Tony Cox’s Matabele Ants solo sessions at The Highlander at the National Arts Festival. He can also be seen with the Aquarian Quartet at the Cathedral, and will play at the SAfm Late Night Live platform at the Tap Huis