A JAZZY SUNDAY WITH DOROTHY MASUKA

This week I have been thinking a lot about my first encounter and interview Dorothy Masuka in 2014. One of Africa’s musical progenies and the brains behind many of the hit jazz-songs which moved black South Africans in the 1940’s, 50’s and even 60’s. She turned 80 on the 2nd of September this week.

From The Archives of My Memory

I had previously spent a lot of time with her and other black South African musicians who were prominent during that era: the era before kwaito, bubble gum, and protest songs. The era when Jazz was the scent which perfumed smokey night clubs, muddy township pavements and set little boys feet twisting and hips waging to penny whistles: from Maraba, swing Jazz and later Kwela music deep in the archives of the SABC, never once thinking that a day would come when I would sit next to one of them, listen to them perform or even be granted an interview. I loved the crackling sounds of their voices, the passionate coyness behind the words. The happy rhythms of a sad melody. At times I would stay in there for hours or as long as my work schedule would allow, absorbing the silent cries of a time which maDorothy Masuka described as tough. I would emerge from the time capsule wondering how on earth I ended up living in the new millennium. Of course, one is bound to romanticise the past and this era in particular, which was by no means the nicest nor the most forgiving for black people. It saw the introduction of some of the harshest racial segregation laws against Africans. But, when the present seemed to lack that sense of urgency, a collective purpose or a deep visceral flirtation with life and death, freedom and captivity it does become easy to live in phantasies and promises of a by gone era.

Sophiatown

Listening to maDorothy Masuka share stories behind the music produced at that time at the Afrikan Freedom Station in Westedene was a grounding phantacy killer. It made it more apparent to me that this new millennium with all its problems was in fact the dream which powered the lives and music that she composed and performed with the likes of Mariam Makeba, Dolly Rathebe and Hugh Masekela. Music which increasingly became about a political war which permeated the everyday lives of black people, a war against a seemingly invincible enemy. After 33 years in exile it was the first time that maDorothy Masuka returned to the famed Sophiatown in June 2014. Now known of course by a different name – Westdene.

Then Sophiatown was a freehold land ownership neighbourhood with a jostling, ambitious community, a place which set the pace for African urban life for three decades before the arrival of apartheid bulldozers at the end of the 1950’s. The story of Sophiatown began in 1897 with a speculator called Herman Tobiansky who bought 237 acres of land 7 kilometres west of the city and named it after his wife Sophia. Local authorities built a sewerage disposal works nearby, which put whites off - buying plots in the area, and then after the first World War they built a municipal location called the Western Native Township next door which snuffed Tobiansky’s dream of a white suburb. He then decided to sell his plots of land to Africans and Sophiatown was born.

Sophiatown developed organically. There were no fences and Africans did not need permission to settle there, buying land according to the best market principles at the time and moving in. History has it that there in Sophiatown, it was as if Apartheid didn’t exist, so much so that white bohemia arrived to settle in the suburb, rubbing shoulders with a creative community that included leading journalists, musicians, writers and politicians.

Present Histories

But perhaps like Sophiatown, a place once described as the ‘Chicago of South Africa’ Dorothy Masuka’s story will not be found in many history books. Her name, in some ways disappears behind her front runners who dominated the scene such as Dolla Band (Abdullah Ibrahim) saxophonist Kippie Moeketsi, Hugh Masekela, Dolly Rathebe, Miriam Makeba, Letta Mbuli, Abigail Kubheka and Mary Rabotapa who also formed part of Miriam Makeba’s all women group, the Skylarks.

The Authour of Pata-Pata, Khawuleza, Kulala, and Into Yam

Though she arrived to an intimate crowd at the Afrikan Freedom Station, everyone there was eager to drink from her deep well of spiritual wisdom. She became at least in my eyes, the physical embodiment linking the past, present and future. Her opening remarks to her hour long performance echoed like a memory emerging from a gramophone;

‘There’s no Johannesburg without Sophiatown. This was a mixed pot. People of this place lived, they didn’t have colour. We lived together in this place as human beings. And then the Devil came some time somewhere. And we all know what happened.’

She opened the evening with a song sung by the late Mariam Makeba whom she regards as a sister, written by an Afrikaner boy deep in the throes of passion called Forbidden Games. The lyrics forced the audience to re-live the feelings of a frustrated lover in an era when love and romantic/sexual love in particular was forbidden between whites and Africans. Today there is no law against love but we are still unable to show it, share or be vulnerable enough to let it melt our walls.

Today we have many reasons not to love.

Her musical repertoire meandered through some of the great American Jazz artists who influenced many South African Jazz bands of the time such as such as ‘the Boston Stars’, ‘ Gay Gaieties’, ‘Manhattan Brothers’, ‘Synco Fans’, ‘Jazz Maniacs’ and ‘Pitch Black Follies’ who were obsessed with black American jazz music in particular. She then returned back to the motherland performing a song in Swahili (Malaika) a language Masuka is fluent in after spending three decades in exile in East Africa. Her years in exile were precipitated by a ban of her music by Apartheid censors for writing highly political songs against the regime including a tribute to Patrice Lumumba, the liberation hero and first democratically elected Prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The song Malaika spoke of true love abandoned in exchange for money and status.

Later in a formal interview conducted for the Mail Guardian she spoke of a lack of reverence to the spiritual essence of making music, a complaint which many young people often dismiss as old people’s babble. She shared how disturbed she was by what she saw particularly the myriad of posters advertising cheap abortions on Johannesburg’s’ streets which she said has become a very ‘dirty’ place. She was preparing to return to her farm in Tanzania.

The Years of Silence

A Distant pained look emerged behind the window of her brown eyes when asked about her years in exile. She seemed reluctant to speak of the years in which worked as a flight attendant, an a fund raiser for the liberation struggle, while also raising her children two of whom, twins, died at a very young age. She described those years as dark and painful but said even that painful isolation could stop her from singing.

Born in Zimbabwe in 1935, Masuka whose parents emigrated to South Africa from Zimbabwe when she was 12, knew what she wanted to do in life even before she entered puberty. She was a singer. Her passion which she followed blindly led her to drop out of School in her early teens to follow a life on stage. It in those days, when she made that brave move and dropped out of St Thomas college that she penned one of her most enduring hits an pld personal favourite – Hamba Nontsokolo. noNtsokolo is a Xhosa word meaning one who suffers.

A true lady of showbiz, I had a moment to make her some tea, and witness her vast collection of hair, shoes and accessories. She also showed us her collection of hats, scarves and gloves which she crochet herself, and I bought one because

it was winter.

Leaving her home in Yeoville I felt nostalgic yet bitter sweet about the day spent in her living room. To me she was a woman who had seen it all, suffered much but still managed to keep her fire burning. I felt worried about the questions which were not answered, perhaps I was looking for some controversy, a juicy tale about how she felt cheated by life, for not having enjoyed her place in the sun as much as her sisters in the industry had.

As a journalist I have always prided myself for my ability to remain somewhat disaffected by prominent people, celebrities or people in power. But with maDorothy I found myself to be a child again, still seeking a way to connect the dots between her past, my present and our future. I knew that I needed to allow her to speak, allow her words to fill her 33 years of silence into my 33 years of life. As I sat listening to her story I realized that the only difference between my story and hers is time. The same agent of change which separates our worldviews, found a way to unite us under one roof, twice.

maDorothy Masuka is a woman with a tremendous amount of staying power. She has a formiddable inner strenght which has stood the test of time. Salute!

#culture #women #theafrican