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A significant and exciting research programme on the History, Culture, Identity and Politics of South African Jazz Music has been launched at Rhodes 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网. Funded by the Mellon Foundation, the programme will run over three years and comprise the following main elements:
? Biographical research that will result in a comprehensive biography of Abdullah Ibrahim
? Collecting, studying and generating material about the jazz heritage in South Africa
? Developing an archive of South African jazz music?
In drawing up this research proposal, the 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 argued that although South Africa has a long, rich and internationally-recognised jazz music tradition, jazz has received inadequate scholarly attention and that it is important to have a research programme incorporating diverse elements before the passage of time irretrievably erases this tradition.
Prof Robert van Niekerk, recently appointed to the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) from Oxford 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网, will head up the project on Abdullah Ibrahim’s life and music, while Prof Marc Duby, Head of the Music Department, will co-ordinate the jazz heritage research and archival development in close collaboration with Prof Diane Thramm, Director of the International Library of African Music (ILAM). ILAM is already involved in the Red Location project, which seeks to document the music and history of a group of jazz musicians from the Port Elizabeth area.
The overall goals of the South African Jazz Heritage Studies and Archive Development Programme is to produce pioneering new text (including biographies) and a full digital archive of written, visual and music materials based on the musical lives of South African jazz musicians as a mechanism to understand modern jazz as it has evolved and developed in South Africa in the era of apartheid and in the democratic era. A multi-disciplinary study of the life of Abdullah Ibrahim as a musician and social commentator, presents the ideal opportunity to document not only his jazz legacy, but to promote a knowledge and understanding of South African jazz as music of resistance, transformation and healing.
The initial three-year project is intended to result in an embryonic digital musical archive of modern South African jazz music which will have, as a start, the digitisation of Ibrahim’s music; an embryonic digital visual archive of documents and ephemera including inter alia musical memorabilia, posters, artwork, album covers and photographic pictures of South African jazz music/political resistance spanning the 60-year period from 1950 to 2010; a digital voice archive of the interviews that will be undertaken with both Abdullah Ibrahim and the musicians, cultural and political activists and critics that performed with or significantly engaged with Ibrahim in the course of his musical life.
This research programme is seen as a pilot project that will lay the foundations for the broader, long-term vision of a Jazz Centre that will comprise a scholarly research programme, publishing on jazz, biographies of select jazz figures and a Jazz Archive.
Pic by: Manfred Rinderspracher.