SAM MATHE
Zim Ngqawana died on the 17th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s presidential inauguration. On that historic day at the Union Buildings, the jazz virtuoso and band leader conducted a 100-piece super-band dubbed Drums for Peace Orchestra and also starred as a solo saxophonist.
That he was invited to play such a pivotal role as a performer on such an august occasion before most of the world’s influential people and statesmen only confirmed his outstanding musical gift as a saxophonist, singer, pianist, band leader, composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist.
A native of New Brighton, Port Elizabeth, he was destined to follow in the giant footsteps of jazz greats from his hometown – notably Duke Makasi (1942-1993), one of the brightest tenor saxophonists of his generation and band leader whose life was also claimed by a stroke; and bassist Johnny Dyani (1945-1986) of Blue Notes fame, who collapsed on stage in Germany after suffering a throat haemorrhage. These were his idols as well as other Eastern Cape natives such as trumpeter Mongezi Feza, another tragic figure from Blue Notes who died in exile at 30.
During interviews Ngqawana acknowledged the puffy-cheeked Queenstown-born trumpeter as one of his earliest influences who inspired him to play the flute at 21. Ngqawana salutes Mongezi Feza in Zimology, his second album under the Sheer Sound label, with the trumpeter’s best-known composition, You Think You Know Me. In the same album, he dedicated Requiem to another unsung Eastern Cape hero, the late pianist Bucs Gongco, Mayenzeke to Abdullah Ibrahim as well as other Blue Notes members, the late Dudu Pukwana and Chris McGregor.
A blend of Xhosa folk music and township jazz, Zimology celebrates the rich heritage of South African music while paying homage to an earlier generation of the country’s jazz masters. And while he indicated that he had listened to a wide variety of jazz albums with his brother, he acknowledged John Coltrane as his definitive influence after hearing the US saxophonist’s A Love Supreme.
“I was immediately drawn by the power of his music and since then I have always wanted to perform,” he said. “To me Coltrane sounds more African than many local jazz artists.”
Zim started performing formally with his brother in the late seventies as members of the Afro Teens. He later played with the Black Slaves, a reggae band, and Pacific Express. A while after this he recorded an instrumental pop album with Jonathan Butler, who had made a name for himself as a guitar whizz with the Pacific Express – at the time the country’s best-known rock-jazz powerhouse with an international reputation .
In 1987 he won a place at Rhodes University’s school of music, where he specialised in jazz studies. He later enrolled at the University of Natal where he obtained a diploma in jazz studies. Here he became a member of the campus outfit, the Jazzanians which performed under the baton of piano master Professor Darius Brubeck. It was under the aegis of Brubeck that the Jazzanians attended the convention of the International Association of Jazz Educators in Detroit, Michigan, in 1988.
Workshops with trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and drummer Max Roach proved an eye-opener and subsequently opened doors for him to further his studies at the University of Massachusetts, thanks to a Max Roach scholarship. The drummer was also his lecturer. He was also taught by saxophonist Archie Shepp and flautist Yusuf Lateef while playing in the Amherst Graduate Band. After his return from abroad in the early 1990s, he was widely hailed as among the most talented of his generation and made tremendous strides in popularising this genre among young jazz lovers.
In 1993 he followed in the footsteps of his other mentor, Abdullah Ibrahim, and converted to Islam under the name Abdul Aziz. It was a religion whose roots he had traced from African belief systems. “After years of soul-searching I think I have finally found a spiritual home in Islam,” he said.
“I was brought up as a practising Christian and attended a Presbyterian Church, but for me converting to Islam was a matter of common sense. Islam is more than just a religion; it is, like music, the very essence of life.”
The quest to find spiritual fulfilment was replaced by the search to know oneself, life’s purpose and related philosophical questions.
He called this search to know himself Zimology – and found some answers in Sufi mysticism, a philosophical branch of Islam that was defined as a “science through which one can know how to travel into the presence of the Divine, purify one’s inner self from filth and beautify it with a variety of praiseworthy traits”.
Quoting a prominent Sufi guru, Inayat Khan, he wrote, “All blessings and benefits derived from Earth and heaven are gained by mastery, which depends upon knowledge, knowledge depending upon name. Man without the knowledge of a thing is ignorant, and the ignorant are powerless, for man has no hold over anything of which he has no knowledge.”
As a teacher and mentor in his own right, he founded the Zimology Institute, whose primary objective was to teach young musicians essential skills and the workings of the industry. And when the institute was vandalised and priceless instruments were damaged, he soldiered on and organised a concert that highlighted the scourge of crime in our country. Ngqawana was one of the primary movers of the post-1994 jazz renaissance alongside arguably its brightest star, Moses Taiwa Molelekwa.
He was very upbeat about the future of South African jazz as an influential idiom in the evolution of popular culture. “Jazz has finally arrived as a popular style and although the industry still has teething problems, a significant number of its practitioners are making a decent living.” Ngqawana didn’t only try to make a living. He saw himself as an important figure in the bigger scheme of things, as a creative thinker who was not only about entertainment, but, in his own words, inner-attainment – a showman as well as a shaman who grappled with deep philosophical questions.