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KIPPIE MOEKETSI |
| Without a doubt Kippie Moeketsi is the symbolic representation of the importance of music within the Sophiatown Renaissance cultural movement of the 1950s. He was its musical genius. To measure the true dimensions of his achievements it is only necessary to recall that when Hugh Masekela, Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand), Jonas Ngwangwa returned from a 30-year exile in 1990, all three recalled independently of each other that Moeketsi had been in the 1950s and in the 1960s the foremost South African jazz musician of their generation. These three great exponents of South African jazz were in a position because together with Moeketsi they formed a jazz combo known as the Jazz Epistles, which was the jazz group of the 1950s. In his book, In Township Tonight: South Africa’s Black City Music and Theatre, David B. Coplan writes: “On tour in the Cape in 1954, pianist Todd Matshikiza suddenly left the band [Mackay Davashe’s Shantytown Sextet] and was replaced by Dollar Brand, who became Kippie’s closest friend. Together they listened and experimented with the music of Parker, Thelonius Monk, Duke Ellington, Bud Powell, Coleman Hawkins, Don Byas, Lester Young, Ben Webster, and other Americans. Together with Hugh Masekela (trumpet) and Jonas Gwangwa (trombone), they formed the Jazz Epistles and at last played with complete artistic freedom, though most often before a white or integrated audience” (Ravan Press: Johannesburg, 1985, p. 191). In a footnote to an Interview of 1985 he conducted with Abdullah Ibrahim in Umhlaba Wethu (Skotaville Publishers, Johannesburg, 1987), a book he edited, Mutloase Mothobi stated that Abdullah Ibrahim idolized and worshipped Moeketsi (p.63). In an Interview of 1980 conducted in Maseru, “Trumpeting The Black Musicians Cause”, in the aforementioned book, Hugh Masekela utters these extraordinary words to Mothobi concerning Kippie Moeketsi: “It is amazing that Kippie Moeketsi has been around for a long time and has never made an LP on his own. It is only when Pat Matshikiza or Dollar Brand calls him that he’s been able to do something. There’s an image hanging around him that he is a drunkard. Truth is he has been frustrated in his attempts to set things straight for Black artists. Bra Kippie is among the most brilliant musicians we’ve ever had and also a champion for the rights of his colleagues. Even militants use to call him a trouble-maker” (p. 85). With such superlative praise from two masters of South African jazz, Ibrahim and Masekela, Moeketsi belongs to a pantheon of South African cultural masters. He was arguably the defining voice of South African jazz during the era of the Sophiatown Renaissance. In his Interview with Mothobi, “Roll ‘Em Morolong”, Jerry Kippie Moeketsi mentions the unpleasant aspects of being a jazz musician in the 1940s and in the 1950s: “In those days the tsotsis were rough. Musicians used to get a hiding from them now and then. They would say to us that we were thinking that we are clever, and better than them. Sometimes the tsotsis would force us to play right through up to 9.00 am. By force! We played all the songs they wanted. I remember one incident in which I managed to escape with my dear life. It was in ’48 when we were still playing at the Bantu Men’s Social Centre. Tsotsis came man. There were about seventeen, carrying tomahawks, and chopping everybody in the hall for no reason. After they had finished with the audience, they came onto the stage while we stood there glued frightened. They then began chopping up our instruments and just then we ran for our lives with the thugs in hot pursuit. One of them chased me down Von Wielligh Street. It was about three o’clock in the morning. He shouted at me, “Kom hier, jong, Kippie!’ His name was Seven. Fortunately for me, a police van appeared and the thug disappeared. The tsotsis were attacking us for the fun of it. They were from Alexandra Township. I think it was not yet the Spoilers. It was before their time.Yah, musicians used to have a tough time during those days” (p. 71). A major musical biography on him still needs to be written today, nearly two decades after his death. When such a study is written, the influence of Charlie Parker on Kippie Moeketsi will be easily apparent, thereby confirming the deeper parallels in the unity of New Negro modernity (United States) and New African modernity (South Africa). | |