Jazz legends drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo and pianist Abdullah Ibrahim sit at opposite ends of musical expression in the struggle for black liberation in South Africa. Like many other black musicians, Moholo and Ibrahim left the country in the 1960s under apartheid, rather than endure the oppression, violence, and havoc of the time.
But if the harmonious beauty of pianist Ibrahim’s lyricism and vibrant, complex rhythms aims to lift and soothe, drummer Moholo’s free-jazz ensembles entwine the heartrending effects of oppression and dislocation into a savage, coiled beauty formed from intense, sinewy lines of abstract sound, scattershot with chaotic tonal clusters and explosive percussion.
Both masters were featured under the South Africa Now! series at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, and as different as they are, both greats, still at the top of their game, continue to bring sublime power and versatility and unapologetically present jazz as pure and free expression, beyond all horizons.
Moholo-Moholo played an intimate set at Ironworks Studio that blended his effervescent hiss and pow with the monstrous talent of three of London’s greatest contemporary jazz musicians. The quartet works at a rare level where each player’s free experimentation merges perfectly with the group’s interdependent expression.
To say that Moholo-Moholo and saxophonist Jason Yarde, pianist Alexander Hawkins, and bassist John Edwards swing but also destroy doesn’t explain the half of it. These “4 Blokes,” as they call themselves on their new album, conjured almost overwhelmingly beautiful magic and tranquility out of chaos. I came away from the heat of raw emotion stoked in the Ironworks furnace, and the blaze of enraptured faces and wildly clapping hands, having witnessed, bar-none, peerless collective improvisation, and a most astonishing emotional experience.
Intensely musical, ecstatic, angry, sad, glorious, joyful, exquisitely muscular, and at times grimly self-reflexive, the glorious mesh of sound cast across the evening by The 4 Blokes was possessed of an inner necessity that made it seem definitive by chance. It was one of those mystical moments at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival this year, as though every colour, note, clash, and texture I could ever want to hear had been cosmically woven into the quartet’s mayhem, giving it an eternally fresh and timeless sound. Judging by the roar out of the full house at the Ironworks that night, I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.
Abdullah Ibrahim’s Mukashi Trio (with excellent Noah Alexander on cello and double bass, and Cleave Guyton on clarinet and flute) performed chamber jazz from Ibrahim’s album Mukashi (Japanese for once upon a time) at the Vogue Theatre. Ibrahim is a spiritual composer and player, famous for his lyricism and impressionistic, visually evocative music poems and stories.
He is also a karate expert and devotee of the 17th-century Japanese samurai warrior Miyamoto Musashi. An interesting man, his lovely character is fascinating to watch onstage, as is his love to play. He performed uninterrupted and transitioned from piece to piece through tireless piano solos to produce a mellow and soothing hush among the audience.
Mukashi, his new and very good music, delicately evokes Asian colours among his many other influences. It brings a new sound to jazz that is spare and full of space, but still holds the warm sway of his Capetown sound. The evening was a set of luminous, warm, and mysterious sketches, dabbed here and there with gorgeous lyrical flight. It was deliciously fresh and calming.
