{"id":67787,"date":"2016-04-11T22:47:55","date_gmt":"2016-04-11T20:47:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/the-marginalised-african-songbird-who-finally-became-visible-again-the-conversation\/"},"modified":"2016-04-11T22:47:55","modified_gmt":"2016-04-11T20:47:55","slug":"the-marginalised-african-songbird-who-finally-became-visible-again-the-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/the-marginalised-african-songbird-who-finally-became-visible-again-the-conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"The marginalised African Songbird who finally became visible again | The Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"
Sathima Bea Benjamin was seldom recognised during her lifetime as a performer. <\/span> Ian Bruce Huntley<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1948, the National Party came to power in South Africa and immediately implemented legislation intended to weaken struggles for social democracy, labour rights and racial equality. These apartheid laws further codified racial segregation and severely limited rights of black people in the country.<\/p>\n

There was no room for \u201cnatives\u201d, except as maids, cooks and labourers. In this severely segregated context, something modern and international, like jazz, was considered anathema by the apartheid state. As mass opposition to the regime grew during the 1950s, jazz served as one of the prevailing soundtracks of struggle.<\/p>\n

This social and political cauldron produced some of South Africa\u2019s greatest musical figures, notably Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, Chris McGregor, Letta Mbulu and Abdullah Ibrahim. And it was that same cauldron that provoked them to flee their country.<\/p>\n

Recognition in the American jazz world<\/h2>\n

One of those exiles, Sathima Bea Benjamin \u2013 a singer and composer, and Ibrahim\u2019s life partner \u2013 is rarely mentioned in the pantheon of South African artists. This is despite a half-century in the music business and praise from none other than American jazz great Duke Ellington. Nor has she earned full acceptance and recognition in the American jazz world.<\/p>\n

Some might glance at her career and chalk it up to bad luck.<\/p>\n

In 1959, Benjamin recorded My Songs for You<\/em> \u2013 what should have been the first jazz LP in the history of South African music. But it was never released. Besides the predictable problem of finding a distributor amid rising racial tensions and state repression, the session just wasn\u2019t up to par.<\/p>\n

Four years later, Ellington produced a historic recording session with her for Reprise Records. But the label decided she wasn\u2019t commercial enough and shelved the record. It was finally released in 1997 as A Morning in Paris<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The few critics who have paid attention to Benjamin regard her as one of the great musical storytellers.<\/p>\n

Scuffle for work<\/h2>\n

Benjamin is known for delivering lyrics with the kind of patience and emotion that leaves audiences hanging onto every word. As Jon Pareles, a critic for the New York Times<\/em>, wrote in 1983, \u201cin song after song, Miss Benjamin could make a word cry out with just a flicker of vibrato\u201d. And yet, from the time she left South Africa in 1962 until close to her death on August 20 2013, Benjamin always had to scuffle for work.<\/p>\n

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<\/span> <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Benjamin was not \u201cAfrican\u201d enough to be marketable, and too \u201cAfrican\u201d or exotic to be taken seriously as a great jazz vocalist. Under apartheid she was classified as a \u201ccoloured\u201d. Racial classification was the foundation of all apartheid laws, placing individuals in one of four groups: \u201cnative\u201d, \u201ccoloured\u201d, \u201cAsian\u201d or \u2018white\u2019.<\/p>\n

She once complained in an interview with me on March 5 2004: \u201cPeople write books and things about jazz singing and they don\u2019t include me. So what is the reason? Sometimes I think it\u2019s because I don\u2019t come from Georgia.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a coloured South African whose repertoire excluded township music or traditional isiXhosa songs, Benjamin has been considered less authentic than, say, Makeba. Although late in her career, she began to sing standards over Cape Town\u2019s unique shuffle rhythms. She fashioned herself as a jazz vocalist and remained squarely in the idiom. Yet Benjamin was as much a product of the struggle to overthrow apartheid as Makeba was. She too composed liberation songs and paeans to her homeland, and worked tirelessly in support of the African National Congress (ANC).<\/p>\n

Expression of defiance<\/h2>\n

Benjamin and Makeba both became professional singers during apartheid\u2019s formative years, when jazz was hailed as a music of freedom. Jazz in South Africa was an expression of the nation\u2019s defiant present and liberatory future \u2013 thoroughly modern, urban, sophisticated and non-racial.<\/p>\n

Many of Benjamin\u2019s contemporaries and compatriots, including Makeba, abandoned jazz for township music or indigenous folk songs, or attempted to fuse the genres in an effort to root their music in South African soil. But Benjamin never strayed from her devotion to modern jazz as \u201cthe most liberating music on the planet\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ironically, that same commitment ensured her marginalisation, as beautiful romantic ballads and torch songs lost their relevance in a highly nationalistic era of urban militancy. And as a coloured South African woman working in a genre too often construed as black \u2013 and as white, male and essentially American \u2013 Benjamin had to struggle just to be heard.<\/p>\n

No recordings<\/h2>\n

In the late 1950s the South African political situation was tense, as confrontations between the state and liberation movements escalated in frequency and ferocity.<\/p>\n

As with many politically conscious musicians at the time, Benjamin and Ibrahim\u2019s main priority was to leave South Africa. In January 1962 they began a decade in exile in Europe, southern Africa and the US. During this time Ibrahim made several albums. Benjamin, by contrast, made no recordings except for a single track on one of Ibrahim\u2019s unreleased transcription records.<\/p>\n

The combination of solitary study, reflection, motherhood and travel back and forth to southern Africa inspired her to write poetry and compose her own music. In 1974 she composed Music<\/em> as a tribute to her husband.<\/p>\n