John Edwin Mason: Documentary, Motorsports, Photo History

A Night in Zurich, A Morning in Paris: Sathima Benjamin and Duke Ellington, 1963

In 1963, Duke Ellington changed the lives of two young South Africans forever.  One of them was the composer/pianist Abdullah Ibrahim, then known as Dollar Brand.  The story of Duke’s discovery of this great talent in a Zurich, Switzerland, nightclub, the recording session that he produced in Paris, and the subsequent release Duke Ellington Presents the Dollar Brand Trio is well known.

The world is less familiar with Sathima “Bea” Benjamin, the singer who persuaded Duke to visit that tiny club on a snowy winter's night.  She and Ibrahim, her husband-to-be, had fled South Africa in search of freedom and opportunity.  They were poor, but they were making music on their own terms.  Benjamin's singing impressed Duke deeply, and he recorded her as well as Ibrahim in Paris.  Sadly, her effort languished in a vault, until it was finally released to much acclaim as A Morning in Paris in 1996.

A few weeks ago, I spoke with Benjamin, in Cape Town, South Africa, where she has resettled.  While we spoke about many things, the story that she told about being discovered by Ellington was especially vivid.  She told me that, when Duke arrived in Zurich for a concert she already knew that Frank Sinatra had asked him to recruit new talent for Reprise records.  She was determined to get his attention:

“...I don't know how I got backstage. ...there were all these women with their furs.  You know, Duke Ellington loved the ladies, and the ladies loved him.  So there were a whole lot of rich, elegant Swiss ladies, with their furs and jewels, waiting to get in his dressing room.  ...and I'm standing there with my little Salvation Army clothes....  But every time the door would open, he would catch my eye.  Then at one point he said, ‘Let her in.’  And there I was in the room.  It was a miracle.

 

 

"I'm Glad There is You."  Sathima Benjamin with Abdullah Ibrahim, piano.  Paris, 1963.

 

"I said if you'd just come with me when the show is over and listen to the Dollar Brand trio, I think you would be very interested.  He didn't even ask me at that point what do I do.  He said ‘Ok.’

"Afterwards... we get to the club and the owner had the key in the door.  Abdullah and [band members] Makaya [Ntshoko] and Johnny [Gertze] were standing outside, and they see me get out of the car with Duke Ellington.  Oh, my God!  ...So the owner puts the key back in the door and we go in.

"The trio played, and Duke sat there in wonderment.  [He] said, ‘Listen.  Be at my hotel at 10:30 am.’  We didn't sleep that night.  It was February and was snowing.  ...We just couldn't believe what happened.  [The next day, Ellington arranged for Sathima, Abdullah, and the band to travel to Paris to record for him.]

"...when we got to Paris... they took us to the Champs-Élysées.  I have never in my life lived in such a grand hotel.  ...I was just amazed at the grandeur of it all.  But that's what Ellington did.  [At the Barclay studios], Ellington came in with little Billy Strayhorn.  And he aid, ‘Strays... this is Bea.  I think the two of you can do wonderful things.’  And Strayhorn sits there, he has his big glass of champagne and his cigar.  He says, ‘What are we going to do?’  Instead of me coming up with an Ellington song, I said I'm going to sing ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.’

 

 

"Solitude."  Sathima Benjamin with Duke Ellington, piano.  Paris, 1963.

 

"Then Ellington said sing with the trio...  When I started to sing ‘I Got It Bad,’ he  ran out of the booth.  He said, ‘Get off of the piano,’ to Abdullah.  ‘This is my song.’  I thought, ‘Oh, first it was Strayhorn, now here's Ellington.  I can either drop dead now or sing like I never sang before.’  And I know I sang like I never sang before.

"A little later I sang ‘Solitude’ for the very first time.  And ever since that time, when it comes time to do ‘Solitude’ in a show, I tell the pianists ‘No, no, no.’  They tell me that I don't have to sing it alone.  I say, ‘I'm not singing it alone.  I'm hearing Ellington accompanying me.  I'm not alone.  ...Ellington is here with me.’"  [Yes, she's talking about the recording directly above.]

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This interview also appears in the June 2012 issue of Ellingtonia, the publication of the Duke Ellington Society.  I'm very grateful to Miss Benjamin for giving me several hours of her time.

Funky Friday with Nadine Hutton

When I met Nadine Hutton last October, my first thought was this:  She's what I would have been, if I were South African, a woman, had far, far fewer hangups, and more talent.  Of course, that's a complete fantasy.  I know -- heck, you know -- that no matter how South African, female, footloose, and fancy-free I manage to become, I'll never be as cool as Nadine.

Nadine's an artist and photographer, not a musician.  But, as the second video clearly shows, she's sure 'nuff funky.  (The first video is an introduction to her wide-ranging work.)  She's in Los Angeles right now, where for the next few weeks, she'll be an artist-in-residence a the 18th Street Arts Center.  That's reason enough to celebrate.

 

 

 

Nadine's one of my favorite photographers.  I love her portraits -- for instance, two images that she made of the great Hugh Masekela.  The first makes me happy; the second blows me away.  You can see them here and here.

I'm also a big fan of an ongoing series of photographs that she's making with an iPhone, in which she's exploring, as she says, "a personal, often ironic and humorous vision of home, Johannesburg."  You can see these wonderful images here.

 

 

 

Nadine's documentary photography is as strong as her more purely artistic work.  "I Have Fallen," an essay on poor whites in South Africa is an example.  As both photography and journalism, it's probably the best work I've seen on the subject.  (I've discussed some recent photo essays on poor whites here and I've looked at the historical backstory, here.)

A Funky Friday without music?  Not a chance.  Play that second video, again.  It will make you want to dance.

Belgian Congo Pale Ale: Yes, the Horror

[Updated, 18 May 2012.]

Belgian Congo Pale Ale?  Or perhaps you'd like some Nazi Dachau Brandy?  Or some Soviet Gulag Vodka?

I've been alternating between anger and despair every since I found this ad on the back page of C-ville, my home town's "alternative" weekly.  As absurd -- as impossible -- as it sounds, the Devils Backbone Brewing Company, of Roseland and Lexington, Virginia, is marketing an ale that celebrates a colonial regime that was responsible for the deaths of 10 million people, a crime that some argue constituted genocide.

 

[Click on either image to see a larger versions.]

It's hard to know what the people at the Devils Backbone Brewing Company were up to.  Part of me hopes that the name of the ale represents nothing more than rank ignorance.  After all, not every college graduate has taken a class in African history or the history of genocide.  Not every reader has come across Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost, a best-selling popular history of the atrocities in the Congo.  Yes, it's possible that nobody at the company knew that Belgium's King Leopold and his minions were responsible for one of the most brutal and all-encompassing forced labor systems that the world has ever known.

It's possible.  But how, then, would we account for the ad's tag line:  The Horror?

That tag line tells us that whoever designed this ad knew about the crimes of the Congo.  Knew that Joseph Conrad had written about them in his great novella Heart of Darkness.  Knew that Conrad had put the words "The horror!  The horror!" into the mouth of his character Mr. Kurtz, the colonial agent who decorated his outpost with the severed heads of his African victims.

Heart of Darkness is fiction, but it's fiction based on Conrad's experiences in Leopold's Congo.  The book, Conrad once said, "is experience... pushed a little (and only very little) beyond the actual facts of the case."

If we've eliminated ignorance, how do we make sense of the people at Devils Backbone Brewing Company and their ale?

At the very least, they've decided to attract attention in one of the most cheap, cynical, and distasteful ways I can imagine.

At worse -- and, under the circumstances, this is plausible -- they are indeed celebrating genocide.

 

Anti-Slavery International:  Congo.  Photographs of Congolese persons mutilated by rubber sentries, by Alice Harris and W. D. Armstrong, c. 1905.  Reprinted from Mark Twain's pamphlet, "King Leopold's Soliloquy."

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Russell Schimmer, of Yale University's Genocide Studies Program, has written about the atrocities in the Congo:

[During Leopold's personal rule and after he had relinquished control to Belgium, the forced labor regime was designed to produce extravagant profits from the exploitation of African labor.  The commodities in question were ivory and, especially, rubber.]

Male rubber tappers and porters were mercilessly exploited and driven to death.  Leopold's agents held the wives and children of these men hostage until they returned with their rubber quota.  Those who refused or failed to supply enough rubber often had their villages burned down, children murdered, and their hands cut off.

Although local chiefs organized tribal resistance, the FP [Force Publique, colonial Congo’s military police] brutally crushed these uprisings.  Rebellions often included Congolese fleeing their villages to hide in the wilderness, ambushing army units, and setting fire to rubber vine forests.  In retribution, the FP burned villages and FP officers sent their soldiers into the forest to find and kill hiding rebels.  To prove the success of their patrols, soldiers were ordered to cut off and bring back dead victims' right hands as proof that they had not wasted their bullets.  If their shots missed their targets or if they used cartridges on big game, soldiers would cut off the hands of the living and wounded to meet their quotas.

From 1885 to 1908, it is estimated that the Congolese native population decreased by about ten million people.

Belgian parliament refused to hold any formal commission of inquiry into the human rights abuses that had occurred in the CFS [colonial Congo].  Over the next few decades, inhumane practices in the Belgian Congo continued and a huge number of Congolese remained enslaved.

You can read Schimmer's full account, here.

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Update:  18 May 2012:

Jason Oliver, the head brewer at Devils Backbone, has responded to my criticism.  In explaining why he chose the name, he writes:

1) I named it because I was interested in the hypothetical “what if” premise of a pale hoppy beer the Belgians would have brewed (right or wrong for their “infamous” colony) that could have survived a tropical journey.  It was born of historical (revisionist) curiosity that has since morphed into a more contemporary Belgian-style IPA.  Even though I was aware of the terrible legacy of the colony, I was first and foremost interested in the technical aspect and not the cultural weight of Belgians involvement in the Congo.

2) “Belgian” added to the name was meant to help identify what vein of beer it is, for example : “Belgian IPA” or “Belgian Witbier”.  Belgian beers are complex and varied but often share the thread of being somewhat fruity in nature (from the unique yeast strains used).  “Belgian” being added to “Congo Pale Ale” was not meant to make light of the brutal colonial horror but to help describe some of the beers flavor to the consumer.

You can read Oliver's entire response, here.

Like Going Home: The Swingers Jam Sessions, Cape Town, South Africa

I've sung the praises of the Monday night jam sessions at Swingers many times in the past (for instance, here), and I'm not going to miss the chance to do it again.

By now, the sessions are a venerable institution.  When I first visited, about ten years ago, they were already one of the foundation stones of the Cape Town jazz scene.  I'm happy to report that the jams are still going strong.  (Cape Town has a long and rich jazz history, having produced truly legendary musicians, such as Abdullah Ibrahim [Dollar Brand] and Winston "Mankunku" Ngozi.  The current generation is maintaining the tradition.)

 

Tsepo Puoane, Swingers, 26 March 2012.  {Photos copyright John Edwin Mason, 2012.  Click on either image to see a larger version.}

A good jam session needs a strong house band to anchor the musical goings-on.  Swingers has one of the best.  Leader Alvin Dyers (guitar), bassist Alistair Andrews, and drummer Denver Furness have been stalwarts seemingly from the beginning.  A number of pianists and horn players have cycled through, including the late Nick le Roux, a wonderful player who died much too young.  The level at which this band plays is extraordinarily high.  I remember escorting a New York horn player to Swingers a couple of years ago.  He swaggered in, expecting to own the joint.  He walked out full of respect for Cape Town musicians.

Last Monday, Darren English fronted the band on trumpet.  He's been a regular at the jams since he was in high school.  Back then, he wasn't playing with Alvin and the boys, of course.  That's an honor that has to be earned.  After studies at the University of Cape Town's College of Music and the Norwegian State Academy of Music, he's matured into a very creative jazz trumpeter.  (That's Darren in the photo below, sitting in on drums, during one of the late sets.)

 

Ross Eustis, trumpet, Darren English, drums, Swingers, 26 March 2012.

The great thing about a jam session is that you never know who or what you're going to hear.  Most of the time at Swingers, it's a surprise and a delight.  Last Monday, for instance, I was hearing Tsepo Puoane and Ross Eustis for the first time.  Both of them were impressive, fully in control of their instruments and the language of contemporary jazz.  Puoane is a South African, who has been studying overseas; Eustis is an American, who has a grant to study local musical communities in various parts of the world, including South Africa.

If you're live in Cape Town and care about jazz, you already know about Swingers.  If you're a visitor, the club is easy to find -- on Wetton Road (a major street) in a light industrial section of Ottery, a suburb that's about 20 minutes by car from downtown Cape Town.  It's also in most tourist guides.

Cape Town & Goema: The Sound of the City

Cape Town is lucky in all sorts of ways.  (It's also deeply troubled, but that's a topic for another post.)  The city nestles between Table Mountain and the sea in one of the most spectacular natural settings in the world.  The people are wonderful, the food is amazing, and it has its own music -- goema.

I'm going to be talking about goema's history at the annual conference of South African Association for Jazz Education [SAJE] next Tuesday afternoon at the University of Cape Town.  I'll be making the point that goema -- a music that blends influences from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas -- could only have grown in Cape Town's unique soil.  It's rooted in a history of slavery and forced migrations, colonialism, dispossession, struggle, and ultimately freedom.

My friends Paul Sedres and Mac McKenzie will follow me on the program (I promise to be short) and talk about goema's present and future.  Then Mac will play some goema, in all its diversity.  (Mac is the first person that you hear speaking in the trailer for the wonderful documentary "Mama Goema," directly below.)

 

 

"Mama Goema:  The Cape Town Beat in Five Movements."

I don't doubt for a minute that most of the audience will be delighted if there's a lot more playing than talking.  Mac is an underground legend in South African music circles.  He first came to prominence in the '80s, fronting The Genuines, a band that combined rock, jazz, funk, and goema.  Since then he's been involved in a variety of extraordinary projects, including the Cape Town Goema Orchestra.

 

 

"Cutting 'Mama Goema."

By the way, I'm a big fan of "Mama Goema."  The filmmakers -- Ángela Ramirez, Sara Gouveia, and Calum MacNaughton -- get it right and make it fun.  The short documentary (above) about the editing of the film is definitely worth watching.  It's as much about the music and the people who make it as it is about the technical details.

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To find out more about goema, check out my book, One Love, Ghoema Beat:  Inside the Cape Town Carnival.  (Ghoema can be spelled with or without the "h."  I'm an "h" kind of guy.)

Mac will be playing (a lot) and Paul and I will be talking (a little) at 3:45, on Tuesday, March 27th, in Chisholm Recital Hall, at the University of Cape Town's College of Music.