Woke up this morning with the sad news in my email inbox–from music journalist Gwen Ansell–that Ezra Ngcukana (b. 1954), the great Cape Flats jazz musician and a member of the Ngcukana jazz dynasty, had passed away. Ngcukana had been diabetic with high blood pressure. Ngcukana’s death is “… no doubt exacerbated by the sadness everybody in Cape Town is still feeling about Robbie Jansen. Ezra must have been devastated by that.”

The best tribute to Ngcukana’s genius I have seen (h/t: Suren Pillay) is this, posted earlier today, by the historian and photographer, John Edwin Mason, here .

Image: John Edwin Mason

 

Further Reading

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.

Goodbye, Piassa

The demolition of an historic district in Addis Ababa shows a central contradiction of modernization: the desire to improve the country while devaluing its people and culture.