Zim Ngqawana

Last updated

Zim Ngqawana in 2008. Zim Ngqawana 2.jpg
Zim Ngqawana in 2008.

Zim Ngqawana (25 December 1959 10 May 2011 [1] ) was a South African flautist and saxophonist. He was later known as Zimology.

Contents

Biography

The youngest of five children, Ngqawana started playing flute at the age of 21, eventually becoming proficient on alto, tenor and baritone saxophone as well. He dropped out of school prior to meeting university entrance requirements but won entrance to a place at Rhodes University. He later studied for a diploma in Jazz Studies at the University of Natal. He was offered scholarships to the Max Roach/Wynton Marsalis jazz workshop and later a scholarship to the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he studied with jazz musicians Archie Shepp and Yusef Lateef.

After his return to South Africa in the 1990s Ngqawana worked with South African jazz musicians Hugh Masekela and Abdullah Ibrahim. He collaborated with Bjorn Ole Solburg on the Norwegian San Ensemble album, San Song. On that album he wrote two songs, "San Song" and "Migrant Workers". He toured the United States with his band "Ingoma" in 1995, and he made an appearance at Black History Week in Chicago.

He performed a duet with poet Lefifi Tladi in the documentary Giant Steps (2005), directed by Geoff Mphakati and Aryan Kaganof. In January 2010, Ngqawana's Zimology Institute was vandalised by scrap metal thieves. He performed a duet concert in the rubble of the vandalised building with Cape Town pianist Kyle Shepherd. This performance was filmed as The Exhibition Of Vandalizimiop by Aryan Kaganof. The Vandalizim concerts were subsequently performed at the Gallery MOMO in Johannesburg and at a scrapyard in Stellenbosch, organised by Stellenbosch University's music department and DOMUS.

Death

Ngqawana suffered from stroke during a rehearsal and was taken to Helen Joseph hospital and succumbed from bleeding on the brain. He is survived by his wife and five children. [2] [3]

Discography

Zim Ngqawana in 2006. Zim Ngqawana.jpg
Zim Ngqawana in 2006.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Duke Ellington</span> American jazz pianist and composer (1899–1974)

Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous jazz orchestra from 1923 through the rest of his life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Max Roach</span> American jazz percussionist, drummer, and composer (1924–2007)

Maxwell Lemuel Roach was an American jazz drummer and composer. A pioneer of bebop, he worked in many other styles of music, and is generally considered one of the most important drummers in history. He worked with many famous jazz musicians, including Clifford Brown, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Abbey Lincoln, Dinah Washington, Charles Mingus, Billy Eckstine, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Eric Dolphy, and Booker Little. He also played with his daughter Maxine Roach, a Grammy nominated violist. He was inducted into the DownBeat Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1992.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hugh Masekela</span> South African musician (1939–2018)

Hugh Ramapolo Masekela was a South African trumpeter, flugelhornist, cornetist, singer and composer who was described as "the father of South African jazz". Masekela was known for his jazz compositions and for writing well-known anti-apartheid songs such as "Soweto Blues" and "Bring Him Back Home". He also had a number-one US pop hit in 1968 with his version of "Grazing in the Grass".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roscoe Mitchell</span> American composer, jazz musician, and educator

Roscoe Mitchell is an American composer, jazz instrumentalist, and educator, known for being "a technically superb – if idiosyncratic – saxophonist". The Penguin Guide to Jazz described him as "one of the key figures" in avant-garde jazz; All About Jazz stated in 2004 that he had been "at the forefront of modern music" for more than 35 years. Critic Jon Pareles in The New York Times has mentioned that Mitchell "qualifies as an iconoclast". In addition to his own work as a bandleader, Mitchell is known for cofounding the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marion Brown</span> American saxophonist (1931–2010)

Marion Brown was an American jazz alto saxophonist, composer, writer, visual artist, and ethnomusicologist. He was a member of the avant-garde jazz scene in New York City during the 1960s, playing alongside musicians such as John Coltrane, Archie Shepp, and John Tchicai. He performed on Coltrane's landmark 1965 album Ascension. AllMusic reviewer Scott Yanow described him as "one of the brightest and most lyrical voices of the 1960s avant-garde."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lesego Rampolokeng</span> South African writer, playwright and performance poet

Lesego Rampolokeng is a South African writer, playwright and performance poet.

The Bassline live music venue and club was established in 1994 in the Melville neighborhood of Johannesburg, South Africa. The venue closed in 2003 and reopened the following year in the downtown Newtown Cultural Precinct, featuring a concert venue with a capacity of 1000 and a performing space with 150 seats. In its 24-year history, Bassline hosted over 3200 concerts featuring many emerging music acts and well-known South African, African, and global music icons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vijay Iyer</span> American composer, pianist, bandleader, producer, and writer

Vijay Iyer is a Harvard Professor, composer, pianist, bandleader, producer and writer based in New York City. The New York Times has called him a "social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway". Iyer received a 2013 MacArthur Fellowship, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a United States Artists Fellowship, a Grammy nomination, and the Alpert Award in the Arts. He was voted Jazz Artist of the Year in the DownBeat magazine international critics' polls in 2012, 2015, 2016, and 2018. In 2014, he was jointly appointed with tenure to Harvard University's departments of Music and African American Studies as the Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts.

Andile Yenana is a South African pianist. He made an indelible mark by switching from teaching to studying jazz. He has produced and worked with many South African as well as international artists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emil Viklický</span> Czech jazz pianist and composer (born 1948)

Emil Viklický is a Czech jazz pianist and composer.

Michael Blake is a South African contemporary classical music composer and performer. He studied in Johannesburg in the 1970s and was associated with conceptual art and the emergence of an indigenous experimental music aesthetic. In 1976 he embarked on 'African Journal', a series of pieces for Western instruments that drew on his studies of traditional African music and aesthetics, which continued to expand during two decades in London until he returned to South Africa in 1998. From around 2000 African music becomes less explicit on the surface of his compositions, but elements of rhythm and repetition remain as part of a more postcolonial engagement with material and form. He works in a range of styles including minimalism and collage, and now also forages for source material from the entire musical canon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Darius Brubeck</span> American jazz keyboardist and educator (born 1947)

Darius Brubeck is an American jazz pianist, author, and educator. He is the son of jazz legend Dave Brubeck with whom he worked professionally in the 1970s, while also performing in his own bands, The Darius Brubeck Ensemble and Gathering Forces.

NewMusicSA is a non-profit arts advocacy organisation that promotes the creation, performance, and enjoyment of South African new music. Founded in 1999 and operating formally since 2003, NewMusicSA is the South African section of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM).

The Documentation Centre for Music (DOMUS) forms part of the Special Collections Division of the Music Library within the Stellenbosch University Library and Information Service and is located in the Music Department. Collections acquired through acquisitions, donations or bequests over more than 50 years form the main holdings and are mostly of South African but also of international significance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nduduzo Makhathini</span> South African Jazz musician (born 1982)

Nduduzo Makhathini is a South African jazz musician from Umgungundlovu, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephanus Muller</span> South African music scholar (b. 1971)

Stephanus Muller is a South African music scholar and writer who has written about South African twentieth-century composition, exile, archiving, language politics, music and apartheid and university institutional transformation. As the last chairman of the Musicological Society of Southern Africa, he was a founding member of the South African Society for Research in Music (SASRIM) in 2006. He also founded the Documentation Centre for Music (DOMUS) in 2005 at Stellenbosch University, and the Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation (AOI) at the same university in 2016. He received his BMus (performance) from Pretoria University in 1992, MMus (musicology) from the University of South Africa in 1998, and DPhil from the University of Oxford in 2001. Having studied with the writer Marlene van Niekerk, he also holds a MA in Creative Afrikaans writing from Stellenbosch University (2007).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation</span> Research institute

The Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation (AOI) at Stellenbosch University is an interdisciplinary research institute dedicated to music studies. Founded in 2016 by the music scholar and writer Stephanus Muller, the institute provides supervision to postgraduate fellows from a variety of disciplines and functions as an independent research hub in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Its mission is to create an institutional space for scholars and artists that encourages experimentation and risk taking. AOI's community include postgraduate and postdoctoral fellows, extraordinary professors, research associates, composers, performers, sonic residents, archival and heritage practitioners and international partners.

Bokani Dyer, is a Motswana-South African pianist, composer and music producer. He creates jazz music containing elements of electronic, R&B, salsa and classical music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lefifi Tladi</span> South African painter, poet, and musician

Lefifi Tladi is a South African painter, poet, sculptor and musician. As a member of the black consciousness movement he was exiled from South Africa in 1976. He lived in exile, primarily in Stockholm, Sweden, until the abolition of apartheid, and in 1997 returned to South Africa for the first time in over 20 years. In 2021, he was awarded the lifetime achievement award by the South African Literary Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Feya Faku</span> South African trumpeter and flugelhornist

Fezile "Feya" Faku, is a South African trumpeter and flugelhornist. Recognized for his contributions to jazz, Faku has built a significant international presence, collaborating with prominent musicians and participating in prestigious festivals worldwide.

References

  1. Matthew Burbidge "Jazz genius Zim Ngqawana dies at 52", Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg), 10 May 2011
  2. "Zim Ngqawana obituary". TheGuardian.com . 6 July 2011.
  3. "Jazz genius Zim Ngqawana dies at 52". 10 May 2011.