Africa Is a Country

Blue Note

Blue Note

By
Sean Jacobs

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrvzEbrf8Ow&w=500&h=307&rel=0]

Master musician Dudu Pukwana, he played the  saxophone, who was part of a great generation of South African jazz musicians (I blogged about them a few days ago), died on this day in 1990.

An appropriate time to post this clip, above, that appear  to be from a documentary about the Blue Notes, the seminal 1960s South African jazz, led by Chris MacGregor, that Pukwana was a part of.  The group later became Brotherhood of Breath outside South Africa. Louis Moholo and Pukwana’s wife, Barbara, talk about the band and its impact.

You can also see a bit of Pukwana at work in this clip from a documentary about music and exile: He plays at the 4:20 mark.

— Sean Jacobs

Further Reading

Writing while black

The film adaptation of Percival Everett’s novel ‘Erasure’ leaves little room to explore Black middle-class complicity in commodifying the traumas of Black working-class lives.

The Mogadishu analogy

In Gaza and Haiti, the specter of another Mogadishu is being raised to alert on-lookers and policymakers of unfolding tragedies. But we have to be careful when making comparisons.

Kwame Nkrumah today

New documents looking at British and American involvement in overthrowing Kwame Nkrumah give us pause to reflect on his legacy, and its resonances today.