The South African music scene includes both popular (jive) and folk forms like Zulu isicathamiya singing and harmonic mbaqanga. South Africa has a global music industry.
Basil "Manenberg" Coetzee was a South African musician, perhaps best known as a saxophonist.
Abdullah Ibrahim is a South African pianist and composer. His music reflects many of the musical influences of his childhood in the multicultural port areas of Cape Town, ranging from traditional African songs to the gospel of the AME Church and ragas, to more modern jazz and other Western styles. Ibrahim is considered the leading figure in the subgenre of Cape jazz. Within jazz, his music particularly reflects the influence of Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington. He is known especially for "Mannenberg", a jazz piece that became a notable anti-apartheid anthem.
Fourplay is a contemporary American smooth jazz quartet. The original members of the group were Bob James (keyboards), Lee Ritenour (guitars), Nathan East (bass), and Harvey Mason (drums).
Christopher McGregor was a South African jazz pianist, bandleader and composer born in Somerset West, South Africa.
Robert Edward Jansen was a South African musician. He was born in Cape Town, South Africa.
The South African College of Music, abbreviated as SACM, is a department of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Cape Town. It is located on the University's Lower Campus in Rondebosch, Cape Town.
Mountain Records is a record label started in Cape Town, South Africa in 1980 by Patrick Lee-Thorp.
Cape jazz is a genre of jazz that is performed in the very southern part of Africa, the name being a reference to Cape Town, South Africa. Some writers say that Cape Jazz began to emerge in 1959 with the formation of The Jazz Epistles, many of whom were from Cape Town, including Abdullah Ibrahim, then known as Dollar Brand. Cape Jazz is similar to the popular music style known as marabi, though more improvisational in character. Where marabi is a piano jazz style, Cape Jazz in the beginning featured instruments that can be carried in a street parade, such as brass instruments, banjos, guitars and percussion instruments.
South African jazz is the jazz of South Africa.
Saxophonist Morris Goldberg, was born in Cape Town, South Africa and grew up in the area known as Observatory. He is recognised as one of the early pioneers of Cape Jazz, along with Dollar Brand and Chris McGregor.
Beatrice "Sathima Bea" Benjamin was a South African vocalist and composer, based for nearly 45 years in New York City.
Darryl Andrews is a South African jazz guitarist, composer, arranger and conducto0. He has a BMus (Hon) degree from the University of Cape Town (UCT). He worked as a musical director/conductor at the South African Broadcasting Corporation for four years, and has composed a body of jazz works that were later performed by the acclaimed concert group MJ9. Since 1977, he has directed the Darryl Andrews Big Band which is a 13-piece Latin ensemble of South African young and established jazz musicians. He has arranged and conducted music for many singers, musicals and concerts at venues such as the Baxter Theatre and the Nico in Cape Town.
Alex van Heerden was a jazz musician from Cape Town, South Africa.
"Mannenberg" is a Cape jazz song by South African musician Abdullah Ibrahim, first recorded in 1974. Driven into exile by the apartheid government, Ibrahim had been living in Europe and the United States during the 1960s and '70s, making brief visits to South Africa to record music. After a successful 1974 collaboration with producer Rashid Vally and a band that included Basil Coetzee and Robbie Jansen, Ibrahim began to record another album with these three collaborators and a backing band assembled by Coetzee. The song was recorded during a session of improvisation, and includes a saxophone solo by Coetzee, which led to him receiving the sobriquet "Manenberg".
The Cape Town International Jazz Festival is an annual music festival held in Cape Town, South Africa. The first one was held in 2000 to 2005 and is recognized as the fourth largest jazz festival in the world and the largest jazz festival on the African continent. The festival was called the "Cape Town North Sea Jazz Festival" due to its association with the North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands.
Rashid Lombard is known as both a jazz photographer and political photojournalist. Lombard is the CEO of espAfrika, an events management company which he started in 1997. espAfrika is responsible for staging the Cape Town International Jazz Festival, formerly known as the North Sea Jazz Cape Town.
