A new musical underground is emerging in Cape Town, which has its roots in the Cape predilection for jazz, yet has its feet firmly planted on the dancefloor. It’s a scene which contrasts strongly with the popular, profit-driven raves, its most defining feature being its disparate audence, encompassing old jollers and babes with silver minis and tiny haversacks.
In the absence of live bands, at present the acid-jazz scene is limited to DJs spinning an infectious, funky groove — a warm, brassy sound which welcomes musos back into music. The label “acid jazz” is a loose one, and its characteristics are as various as the people who support it. There is no clearly identifiable “look” or age group, as is found among techno-heads or metal/grunge-heads. It’s more sophisticated than trendy; more retro than techno; more friendly than hard; it’s in the hips, not in the head.
The history of acid-jazz appreciation in Cape Town can be traced back to the 1980s and The Base, where DJs played a deep, stoned, sparse dub sound, similar to that of current acts such as Tricky and Portishead and the emerging trip-hop derivative. Brownes, in Waterkant Street, revived the scene in 1991, playing orthodox acid jazz, but its credibility dwindled when the DJs started to concentrate on more house-oriented music. Now Brownes just plays repetitive disco, DJs cutting one similar beat into the next; acid jazz, on the other hand, is a musical event, with a sense of drama arising out of the interplay of instrumental solos.
DJ duo Nick Birkby and Trevor Mitchell (see picture below), apprehensive at first about the precedent that had been set by Brownes, decided towards the end of last year to revive a dying scene at The Lounge in Long Street, frequented by alternative professionals and suckers for hip. The Lounge had had a history of occasional funk parties, and even guest appearances by DJs from New York’s Giant Step productions. On this basis, Birkby and Mitchell thought the crowd would be receptive. “We paid great attention to sound quality, hired good equipment and sub-bass speakers, and, with our combined concentration level, we hit them like fiends.”
The duo’s aim is to concentrate on itinerant parties in small, personalised venues, and in the process redeem the reputation and electric atmosphere of real acid jazz. This is what underlies their repertoire of high-octane funk and acid jazz: “It’s a complicated, shifting drum beat, combined with the horn ensembles of 1970s funk, and it makes an excitement, a lively swing. It’s jazz in the present tense — a white heat.”
But acid jazz, it seems, means different things to different people. For DJ D-Cepshun (real name Dino Maranduzzo), it can be too exclusive for comfort — “You don’t get paid to do decent slots; you have to play on the similarities between the genres to make a living” — so he finds himself guesting at techno raves. He calls his brand of acid jazz “new-age dance” or “sunshine” music, revealing his identification with the hippie ideals of the European festival crowd.
DJ Comrade, currently guesting at the Thursday night acid-jazz slot at Gel, emphasises the musical quality of the genre and its intellectually challenging aspects.
While it boils down to being funky, acid jazz draws on many influences. These are exploited by Birkby and Mitchell, who mix old tracks — “Latin, old disco, film scores, car-chase music” — in with the new. This eclecticism is increasingly becoming a feature of the genre, representing the influence of sampling technology.
The catch-phrase here is trip-hop, connected to acid jazz via the hip-hop break-beat. Trip-hop isolates this beat and makes it dominant; it also cuts back on the vocals and introduces more samples. Birkby and Mitchell almost always DJ on turntables because trip-hop can be too slow to dance to, and needs speeding up. Besides, on trip-hop samples you can hear the LP scratches.
“Trip-hop embraces the LP as a source of moods — a retro homage to the medium of vinyl,” says Birkby. “The point is not whether it is sampled — it’s how artistically it’s done. Sampling is creative lifting, becoming an art form in itself.”
Mitchell and Birkby publish an acid-jazz/trip-hop fanzine, Funky Dory.