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Master
Brand
Jazz legend Abdullah Ibrahim converted to Islam and changed
his name. Jed Novick finds out why.
 With
music, as with anything really, it's what's below the
waterline that counts. Anyone can go and buy a fancy suit
- but that doesn't make them a mensch. Anyone can learn
the piano, but that doesn't mean that anyone will want
to hear what you play. As someone else once said, it isn't
what you do, it's the way that you do it. With music,
what separates the great from the good is what happens
when you scratch the surface. With the great people you
can scratch below the surface. And what lies below the
surface is the belief that the musician puts into the
work.
"We,
as musicians living in this modern urban society... We
are supposed to be entertainers, but in traditional societies
we were priests. In any traditional societies anybody
who showed any musical inclination was immediately drafted
into medicine. My great-grandfather was a healer. He tought
us everything about herbs, plants and flowers and what
you are supposed to do. All my family were religious practitioners.
They came from traditional practice and when the white
people came they went into the church. I was the first
one that became a musician and became Muslim. It has all
to do with healing and spiritual practices. Jazz musicians
in America did exactly the same thing. The only thing
was, they did not understand what it was about. They had
no elders to guide them."
Born
with a different name in a different place in a different
time, it's safe to say that Abdullah Ibrahim, born Dollar
Brand, had elders to guide him. There's no confusion in
his soul as to his place in the Great Scheme.
The
world Dollar Brand emerged into in 1934 Cape Town wasn't
the sort of place that young black boys tugged on their
parents sleeves and went to piano lessons after school
before getting picked up by mum in the runaround 4x4.
He was in the old District Six - the part of Cape Town
where the Black community lived before they were transported
into the so called "Homelands". But doesn't
matter. If it's there, it's there and if it's there it's
going to come out. Exposed to a variety of music as a
youngster, including traditional African music, religious
songs and jazz, Brand began studying piano at the age
of seven. A bit of a prodigy, he became a professional
musician in 1949, and played with groups like the Tuxedo
Slickers and the Willie Max Big Band. Ten years later,
he joined the Jazz Epistles, and it was here that the
name Dollar Brand first began to get heard. The Epistles,
who also featured a young trumpet player called Hugh Masekela,
had been formed in 1959 by American pianist John Mohegan
for a recording session and had recorded the first jazz
album by South African musicians.
From here, things went quickly. He left South Africa in
1962 and, while performing in Zurich was heard by his
long time hero Duke Ellington. Ellington was so impressed
by what he heard that he arranged a recording session.
Shortly afterwards, Brand accepted an invitation to join
the Elvin Jones Quartet. The collaboration with Jones
lasted six months. After leaving Jones, he toured as a
soloist and played with top people like Don Cherry and
Gato Barbieri. And then, in 1968, Dollar Brand was no
more.
In
1968, Dollar Brand became a Muslim and changed his name.
Why? "I wanted to get back to the source. The misconception
about Islam is as with everything else. It is a personal
thing that has nothing to do with what someone else says.
What do you feel about it? What is your personal relationship
with yourself? And the universe? And the creator? Either
you believe, or you don't believe."
Ibrahim
spent from 1976 to 1990 in exile in New York, but since
then he's lived back in Cape Town. "Mostly in Cape
Town. But I am always travelling between there and New
York. I had to go back to Cape Town to get residence reorganised
after the years of exile and set up the dynamics for the
family to return. So now it's between Cape Town and New
York, but mostly Cape Town." Is there anything left
of the old days? Has it been cleaned up, washed away and
put in a sanitised museum. Is there history still on the
streets or did the years of Apartheid wipe it out? "That
can never be wiped out! We musicians are the historians.
We record our experiences and our history within our music.
Some of the pieces we play are very old, in fact ancient
traditional songs from the whole area, what the Aboriginals
call 'our dream time'. Music from that time through the
ages through the coming of the European settlers through
the Apartheid era into our times."
Despite
his years of international wandering, despite his reverential
regard for figures like Ellington, what set first Brand
and then Ibrahim apart was his ability to fuse the rhythmic
inflections and grooves of African music with the improvisational
attutudes off Western jazz. Layer in his classic training
and it's a beguiling mix. In the last few years has undertaken
a dazzling variety of projects. One minute there's a collaboration
with Max Roach, the legendary drummer who used to play
with Charlie Parker and all the old boys, the next he's
composing for a twenty-two piece orchestra, the next he's
knocking out the soundtrack to the Johnny Depp film Chocolat.
It's simple to say that he's a fantastic musician, but
it cuts deeper than that. "I am a pilot. I direct
my passengers to the dark corners of their souls, to places
where they usually don't dare to go… In South Africa
music is not separated from the social situation. There
we still find elements which have survived modernisation."
Abdullah
Ibrahim's new album Ekapa Lodumo (Enja) is out now. Concert
Hall, Brighton Dome, May 4, 8pm, £12-£19.
For
more event details see www.brighton-festival.org.uk
or pick up a copy of the Festival brochure or this month's
The Insight magazine
copyright New Insight 2002
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