{"id":227317,"date":"2022-05-27T19:46:24","date_gmt":"2022-05-27T17:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/spirit-of-ntu-south-african-piano-maestro-nduduzo-makhathini-on-his-10th-album\/"},"modified":"2022-05-27T19:46:24","modified_gmt":"2022-05-27T17:46:24","slug":"spirit-of-ntu-south-african-piano-maestro-nduduzo-makhathini-on-his-10th-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/spirit-of-ntu-south-african-piano-maestro-nduduzo-makhathini-on-his-10th-album\/","title":{"rendered":"Spirit of Ntu: South African piano maestro Nduduzo Makhathini on his 10th album"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Nduduzo Makhathini<\/a> is a prolific South African pianist, improviser, healer, educator, scholar and storyteller. He possesses a gift that enables him to articulate a distinct and rich identity and genealogy. His sound signifies a deep rootedness in his ethnic identity in the Zulu culture, and an internationalism<\/a> embodying it. In the Spirit of Ntu<\/a> is his tenth offering, and his second release under premier US jazz label Blue Note Records and the newly founded Blue Note Africa<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The philosophy of Ntu (stemming from the philosophy of ubuntu<\/a>) speaks to the merging of the physical and spiritual and so, in conversation with Makhathini, I have sought to understand how he continues to bridge the artistic, the cultural and the spiritual through song and narrative. My point of departure for our conversation was something he had said in a previous interview:<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

I want to try to get the piano to speak the language of my people, and by the language of my people I mean isiZulu \u2026 the melodic structures of the language \u2026 that filters into how my people sing \u2026 drawing parallels between the piano and some of the traditional music that we grew up listening to.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Phuti Sepuru:<\/strong> How does In the Spirit of Ntu speak the language of your people?<\/p>\n

Nduduzo Makhathini:<\/strong> I\u2019ve been struggling with this whole idea of what really counts as indigenous when everything has been diluted? Also, what counts as indigenous when so much has been taken away? Like the many years of erasure and the various moments of the slave trade, settler coloniality<\/a>, apartheid<\/a>. Do we still really have something that is indigenous to a particular group of people? A sound that is not contaminated; a thought that is not contaminated? <\/p>\n

So, that is how I arrived at Ntu. I borrow a particular sensibility from jazz music, but there are other histories that are pre the arrival of jazz that are useful for me to think about what counts as the sound of my people. Then I started thinking about separating between jazz and the jazziness. When I speak about jazz, it\u2019s of course the transatlantic stories, but when I speak about the jazziness I\u2019m speaking about syncopation, swing, improvisation. These are things that have always been there; they did not come with the arrival of jazz in South Africa in the 1930s.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m particularly attracted to (Rwandan poet and philosopher Alexis) Kagame<\/a>\u2019s thinking about it. He speaks about the four categories: umuntu, which contains the spirit aspect \u2013 divinities, the ancestors; kintu; hantu is about time and space; and kuntu is about aesthetics and beauty. Given these categories, I realised that for these sounds to make sense, we need to start creating homes for them. For me, cosmology<\/a> is a pursuit \u2013 where are these sounds enunciating from? What are these homes? What do they look like? The sound of my people is also about conflict. It\u2019s also about disparity \u2013 not being able to touch in concrete ways, the things that are important to us. It\u2019s also about collective memory, the diasporas. In South Africa, particularly, the exile and inxile discourse and how jazz has always been emerging out of this moment of displacement.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Phuti Sepuru:<\/strong> In what way did the 2021 Durban unrest and riots<\/a> serve as the \u2018canvas\u2019 for this work?<\/p>\n

Nduduzo Makhathini:<\/strong> I was meant to record in the US, and of course, I couldn\u2019t get that organised. Then I asked Jaleel (Shaw), Nasheet Waits, and all these guys who were meant to be on the record if they were keen on coming to South Africa. Jaleel was like, \u2018Bro, given these riots and burning, I don\u2019t think so.\u2019 So, these are the underpinning themes and events that were taking place and I started thinking that we always think about \u201876 (the Soweto uprising<\/a>) to the \u201880s (apartheid violence<\/a>), about (South African pianist Abdullah Ibrahim<\/a>\u2019s track) Mannenberg<\/a> and how it locates that moment, but we always think of it as a backdrop \u2013 a soundtrack.<\/p>\n

This album is emerging out of these burning fires. We\u2019re burning because the system has always been a minute away from collapsing. And now, with the (COVID-19) pandemic, even the suggestions of social distancing<\/a> \u2013 how do people exercise social distancing if you\u2019ve pushed them to extreme dysfunctionality in the townships? You started to see that all the regulations are for a particular people that live in a particular category \u2013 a class \u2013 but it\u2019s not speaking to the majority. I\u2019m one of those people that is in the unrepresented majority. The system failed artists dismally. Then I said, \u201cI am with the people that are tired. I am part of those people that are tired. I\u2019m going to play these sounds from these burning fires.\u201d That\u2019s how this album came about.<\/p>\n

This is what I am doing with this album \u2013 I\u2019m going to burn inside until my ancestors show up because this needs to change. I think about fire in a symbolic way.<\/p>\n

Phuti Sepuru:<\/strong> When listening to Amathongo<\/a> on the new album, I was struck by the dissonant melody, reminiscent of amahubo (Zulu indigenous music), coupled with a sporadic, conversational approach in the piano. This is rooted in a trance-like combination of the bass groove, falling on distinct moments, against a fixed drum pulse. There are also evocative vocal chants that speak to traditional healing rituals. Please share more on this composition.<\/p>\n

Nduduzo Makhathini:<\/strong> I come from that culture and my grandmother used to sing a lot of amahubo. That memory is with me always. In this album, I sing more than I\u2019ve ever done in any album and that\u2019s what people are loving as well.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Many years ago, I discovered (the book) Indaba, My Children<\/a> and ubaba (Credo) Mutwa<\/a> speaks about the word \u2018ithongo\u2019 (dreamscape). He says something interesting because within the word \u2018ithongo\u2019, there is the word \u2018ubuthongo\u2019, which means deep sleep. But for us, it\u2019s being \u2018one with the star gods\u2019. I love that. And it speaks about \u2018iphupho\u2019 \u2013 a dream. He says \u2018uk\u2019phupha\u2019 is to float. So, there\u2019s a sense in which all these things, for me, make sense of a cosmology that always sees the ancestral paradigm as really a paradigm that we\u2019re inside of \u2013 in and out. And of course, using ritual as a connector to exist between the two. That\u2019s really what the song is doing. The resistance of the bass line, versus all these crazy dissonant sounds\u2026 it\u2019s living in the two worlds. <\/p>\n

Phuti Sepuru:<\/strong> Track six is called Re-Amathambo and features Swiss singer-songwriter Anna Widauer<\/a>. This track connects to the original, Amathambo<\/a> (bones), found on your 2017 album, Ikhambi<\/a>. How did you approach the song?<\/p>\n

Nduduzo Makhathini:<\/strong> Re-Amathambo is \u2018re\u2019 \u2013 a reply, but also \u2018re\u2019 (we) in Sesotho. I\u2019ve been interested in the Basotho cosmology.<\/p>\n

When we were touring, I started telling Anna about this idea about my view to the piano as ritual technology or a space for divination. I was telling her about how I recorded that song Amathambo as a way of trying to divine the future and the things that will be happening. On the one hand there\u2019s the idea of amathambo being in the physical realm while exploring something that\u2019s intangible in another realm. That speaks about how as people in the universe we are constantly hearing and thinking about similar things, but from different contexts. <\/p>\n

Anna seemed to have so much connection to this idea of revealing these things: what are these codes that help us enter a mode of revelation or a prophetic mode? It was a chant before: \u2018Weh mathambo, oooh mathambo, hlanganani.\u2019 The story was: there was a man that went to a healer and every time the healer threw the bones, they would go different ways, suggesting that his life was falling apart. The coming together of the bones that the healer was chanting would mean the coming together of his life. So, we brought in that story, and I wrote lyrics, and came out with what I think is a beautiful version of this song.<\/p>\n

Source: The Conversation<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nduduzo Makhathini is a prolific South African pianist, improviser, healer, educator, scholar and storyteller. He possesses a gift that enables him to articulate a distinct and rich identity and genealogy. His sound signifies a deep rootedness in his ethnic identity in the Zulu culture, and an internationalism embodying it. In the Spirit of Ntu is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":227318,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4584],"tags":[3257],"class_list":{"0":"post-227317","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-africa-news-2","8":"tag-mypr","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/spirit-of-ntu-south-african-piano-maestro-nduduzo-makhathini-on-his-10th-album-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}