"Transformations and Reinterpretations of American Jazz: An Inside Account of Jazz Performances in Southern Africa, 1960s to Now": A presentation by Gerhard Kubik
Gerhard Kubik is a professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna. He has been researching African and American music for nearly half a century, and has published widely on the music, dance and oral traditions of Africa and of Afro-descendants in the Americas based on field research in 18 African countries as well as Venezuela, Brazil, and the United States. In the course of his studies, he has compiled the largest collection of African traditional music worldwide (more than 25,000 recordings), most of which are archived in the Phonogrammarchiv Wien in Vienna. In addition to his scholarship, Prof. Kubik is also a performing musician, currently playing guitar and clarinet in Donald Kachamba's Heritage Jazzband, which specializes in kwela and other southern African styles. Some of his recent publications include Theory of African Music, vol II (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming) and Africa and the Blues (University of Mississippi Press, 2000).
Whoever plays jazz in southern Africa is on the sidelines. Record companies, TV stations and concert organizers will rarely pay attention. But jazz was around in South Africa already in the 1950s and 1960s and not only jazz offsprings such as kwela, but bebop, hard bop and a lot of blues derivatives. This lecture explores the jazz presence and jazz reinterpretations in the countries of southern Africa, including Malawi, Zimbabwe and South Africa, analyzing the causes why jazz was deliberately suppressed by the mass media. Prof. Kubik is himself a jazz musician and will present audio and video examples of his work and that of others.
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