Hotep Idris Galeta, the South African jazz pianist, who died last Friday in Johannesburg (of an asthma attack), was a another member of South Africa’s greatest generation of jazz musicians that have passed on in the last year (others: Robbie Jansen and Ezrae Ngcukana. The jazz historian Vincent Kolbe also passed.) Born Cecil Barnard in Cape Town in 1941, Galeta started playing as a youth. He became friends with another pianist, Abdullah Ibrahim, at a high school musical event. Ibrahim, slightly older, became his mentor. After making a name for himself on the local circuit, he left for the United States in the 1960s (where he changed his name to Hotep Galeta), played at Woodstock, was in bands with Jackie McLean, Rene McLean, Archie Shepp, Herb Alpert, among others). In the late 1970s he formed a band with Hugh Masekela and Rene McLean. He eventually returned to South Africa in 1991, taught music at the University of Fort Hare in the Eastern Cape, and performed widely. Reflecting on Galeta’s passing, Rene McLean wrote on his Facebook page: “… It would not be an overt exaggeration of facts to state that Hotep is one of the most important and innovative pianist and composers to emerge from South Africa. At the same time, it must be stated and realized that Hotep’s significance and contributions to South Africa’s musical culture have yet to be fully realized and acknowledged.”
I would recommend buying Galeta’s albums Malay Tone Poem and the less well known “The Tempest,” an album of 11 piano solos, to get a sense of his musical genius. RIP.–Sean Jacobs
Sad to hear of Hotep’s passing. He was indeed one of South Africa’s lesser known masters, a musician’s musician who was well regarded in jazz circles and was much in demand as a sideman in the 70s and 80s. The first time I heard him as a solo act was at the University of Hartford in Connecticut where he appeared as part of a series of residencies and concerts put together by the great Jackie McLean, Rene’s father. He jokingly introduced himself as the “Not-Abdullah Ibrahim-But -The Other One From Cape Town” before launching into a wide ranging set which seamlessly fused Cape Town jazz, maskanda/mbaqanga voicings, hard bop, goema, and 1960s avant garde jazz. Towards the end of the performance, Jackie, on alto, joined him for a bebop inflected Hamba Kahle in which the two masters virtually recomposed the piece.
After he returned to South Africa, I kept in touch with him and he was an invaluable guide as well as a veritable fountain of information as I worked through mountains of research on South African popular culture in the 60s. My fondest memory is of him presiding with magisterial aplomb over a small big band of young firebrands at the Spier Estate outside Cape Town, his patrician face aglow with pleasure as a young Feya Faku lit up the night with his horn.
Hamba Kahle Meneer Hotep!