This weekend at Royce Hall, Abdullah Ibrahim & Ekaya will celebrate the late Hugh Masekela and pay tribute to South Africa’s first black jazz band The Jazz Epistles—the collaboration between the Dollar Brand Trio from Cape Town, Kippie Moeketsi from Johannesburg, and Moeketsi’s protégés Jonas Gwangwa and Masekela.
(Dollar Brand would later be known as Abdullah Ibrahim and his Trio, with Johnny Gertze on bass, and Early Mabuza or Makaya Ntshoko on drums. At the Royce Hall concert, Freddie Hendrix will play trumpet.)
“Mr. Ibrahim’s stark pianism and gently rapturous compositions are steeped in the bright harmonies and bouncing rhythms of his native Cape Town, and they seem to suggest that escape or transcendence could almost be possible. But then there’s the inevitable longing for home, for harmony, for rest. He lives in that balance.”*
ABDULLAH IBRAHIM & EKAYA IN TRIBUTE TO THE JAZZ EPISTLES, Saturday, March 3, at 8 pm.
ROYCE HALL, UCLA, 10745 Dickson Court, Los Angeles.
* nytimes.com/jazz-epistles-abdullah-ibrahim-review
Abdullah Ibrahim.
