Anthea Johnston music
Jazz, as everyone knows, started more than a century ago in the Deep South.
In the early years of the 20th century jazz migrated north and settled in cities like New York and Chicago.
It was always recognised as the United States’s unique contribution to music and is enjoyed by millions around the world.
For years jazz was associated with low dives, drugs and prostitution. In the Twenties it was taken up by the trendy set and for many black musicians, it offered a way out of the ghetto and upward mobility.
Who would have thought that decades later jazz would have been recognised as a serious academic subject?
In the late 1950s in the United States jazz moved into the concert hall and the university. Suddenly it was almost respectable and a musical genre worth studying. Music schools set up jazz programmes. Audiences listened almost in silence and with respect.
Jazz as a university subject in this country dates from 1983 when Darius and Cathy Brubeck settled in Durban to establish the Centre for Jazz and Popular Music as part of the music department at the University of Natal.
Since then, local jazz has flourished, young musicians have been trained, new jazz departments have opened and audiences have grown.
South African jazz is now recognised worldwide as a unique style in its own right and a growing number of our singers and musicians have a global following.
This weekend the Centre for Jazz and Popular Music is hosting the fifth South African Jazz Educators Conference and teachers and jazz groups from institutions around the country will fill the Durban campus.
Luminaries such as Dennis Tini (piano) and Chris Collins (sax) from Wayne State University, Detroit, will join local teachers and students in academic sessions, workshops and two major public concerts.
The first concert is on Saturday evening at the Centre for Jazz and features Tini and Collins, with past student Johnny Mekoa’s Music Academy of Gauteng Youth Jazz Orchestra and the University of Cape Town (UCT) Faculty Jazz Group.
On Sunday afternoon it’s jazz in the Pieter Scholtz Open Air Theatre at the University of Natal, with the UCT Big Band and Technikon Natal Jazz ensemble.
Call the Centre for Jazz at Tel: (031) 260 3385 for more details
November
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