There was a ghoulish air to the Cape Town International Jazz Festival.
Perhaps it was the crater-lined faces of the Flames reuniting or the gospel gargling of Bebe Winans.
Maybe it was Earth, Wind & Fire, who proved that although 40 years together makes it difficult to come up with something new musically, your hairdo can always be innovative.
Musical coffin-dodgers
It is difficult not to suggest that the festival wheeled out some musical coffin-dodgers for this, its 12th edition. It clearly did. But a festival that is consistently sold out year after year and attracts around 35 000 people over two days obviously has a handle on who to programme for — and how to go about it.
The Flames — despite their decrepitude — had middle-aged men and women upfront, with arms aloft, swaying to their covers. A less orgiastic reminder, perhaps, of how a quartet of bruin ous had the apartheid police seriously concerned about the implementation of the Immorality Act way back in the Sixties when white girls swooned and snuck into coloured townships in disguise.
The festival is vital to South Africa’s cultural calendar. Over the years it has exposed local artists and audiences to international musicians and, in many cases, their innovation and genius.
It has also allowed local musicians to perform in, arguably, the most professional environment they will find in the country: from the sound engineering and equipment to the way they are treated.
Revivals, retros and reunions
The festival’s focus has been on jazz music and the explorative, inclusive genes in its DNA. This year it again ran the gamut of subgenres (loosely) associated with what is called jazz music: from the infectious organic house-jazz grooves of the Tortured Soul trio to the smooth stuff of saxophonist Dave Koz and the world-music miscegenation of Guitafrika, made up of guitarists Steve Newman (South Africa), Eric Triton (Mauritius) and Alhousseini Mohamed Anivolla (Niger).
Yet at times it felt as if groundbreaking music was being sacrificed at the altar of revivals, retros and reunions. The festival is a commercial entity and the past masters it attracts no doubt pull crowds, but it is a strategy that begs questions about the audience it will develop over the long term.
Audiences who, over time, could be lining up to listen to or be inspired to perform ‘the future”, as saxophonist Wayne Shorter described music of relevance that is played in the now — musicians of the same calibre as trumpeter Christian Scott, who blew the sound and the fury on the Moses Molelekwa stage on Friday night.
Shorter himself proves that relevance isn’t eroded by encroaching years. He is considered the greatest living jazz composer and proved it with his fellow band members on the Rosies stage. It was an astral jazz journey characterised by the impeccable technical ability of all concerned. But it was also a set elevated above technique, into a realm where intuition and interplay converged. The musicians appeared to be soloing all at the same time, yet coming together and into a whole.
A timely reminder that music is about the future, played in the present.