Darius Brubeck has “played the changes” both as a musician, and politically, through deep involvement in the cultural politics of South Africa, 1983-2005. With partner Catherine, he moved there in 1983 to lead Africa’s first jazz-studies degree programme, at University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) in Durban. In 1989, he became director of the new Centre for Jazz and Popular Music. Catherine Brubeck had studied at UKZN before her career in publishing and music management in New York. As freelance project manager at the jazz centre, she managed many bands. In 2005 the couple’s direct involvement in South African jazz ended and they moved to London, where the pianist established the Darius Brubeck Quartet.
Darius belongs to a famous jazz family, and his father Dave’s liberal political views were an inspiration. He first visited South Africa in 1976, as electric keyboards player with the New Brubeck Quartet – their Durban performance was cancelled because the venue wouldn’t accept mixed audiences. In his foreword, Durban-based academic Christopher Ballantine – whom the Brubecks call their mentor and critic – explains how, following visits to the US, he helped conjure the post for Darius Brubeck through “creative improvisation”, despite apartheid restrictions. Ballantine is author of the wonderful history of marabi-jazz, Marabi Nights; as Darius explains, South African jazz began as a hybrid of dance-based swing and indigenous marabi.
The Brubecks took seriously the ANC’s anti-apartheid boycott, and had to bring music, academic research and political activism together. They describe the political minefields they had to avoid, both in their time in South Africa, and in writing the book. It’s a memoir with insightful portraits of musicians and their political role, published in South African and international editions.
In their pioneering academic programme, the couple worked with black and white musicians to expand the landscape of South African jazz. There’s comedy as they take on the bureaucratic absurdities of apartheid-era South Africa. By page 21, I’m wondering which major cultural figures the Brubecks haven’t met in their amazing careers. (That doesn’t at all imply name-dropping – there couldn’t be two more modest narrators.) During the bad winter of 1961, Catherine worked for Bertrand Russell and got snowed in with him and his wife at their home in Wales. Along with friends, she answered fan-mail that had accumulated while he was in jail. He made a toast of “Death to Macmillan”, and recalled conversations with Gladstone.
On visits to South Africa over the last 20 years, including to UKZN – where I heard Ernest Dawkins’ Jazz To Hip Hop at the Jazz Centre – I’ve learned a little of the huge task that the pair must have faced. It’s a country with real politics – a matter of life and death. In the West, outside privileged elites, people live lives of quiet desperation. But in South Africa, conditions for the mass of the population remain desperately grim by Western standards – “hardscrabble”, as the blurb puts it. Even the poorest in the West have superior life chances; poverty is all-encompassing as it is not in the UK.
The Brubecks’ struggle is heroic. Catherine explains how most township students taking the jazz courses were poor and – in certificate terms – under-qualified, and so had to be smuggled onto courses which they were ostensibly taking for non-degree purposes. As Darius explains, they had no idea that apartheid would end any time soon – tyrannies usually collapse suddenly and unexpectedly. When they flew out, they landed at Jan Smuts Johannesburg – when they left, it was OR Tambo. As Brubeck comments, jazz remains “the music of freedom” – I’d call that “a myth that’s true”.
South African jazz is now as popular outside the country as it has ever been, and figures such as Nduduzo Makhathini have major label contracts. During apartheid, well-known musicians included Hugh Masekela, Abdullah Ibrahim, Dudu Pukwana and Bheki Mseleku – some of whose careers continued into the post-apartheid era. But the Brubecks’ book celebrates the less well-known players who kept the music alive. One of these was Zim Ngqawana, who, like so many South African jazz musicians, died prematurely. He was a student of Darius, and Playing The Changes commemorates him and other unsung heroes. The book is full of names from American and South African jazz. It’s also fascinating to anyone even moderately familiar with Durban – as I am – with its accounts of its development and architecture.
It’s a humbling experience to read this record of what can be achieved by those prepared to take on an oppressive bureaucracy, in the name of a music of freedom. It’s humbling partly because of the Brubecks’ incredible modesty. I knew that they’d achieved remarkable things, but had no idea what their South African story actually involved. It’s an amazing one, and anyone interested in music and politics should read about their account of it. So should anyone interested in the jazz life and its political ramifications – Playing The Changes is truly a rich historical, social and musical resource.
Playing The Changes: Jazz At An African University And On The Road, by Catherine and Darius Brubeck. UKZN Press/University of Illinois Press, pb, 350pp, $125/$24. 95/$14. 95 US (hbk, pbk, e-book). 978-0-252-04617-9
