Hotep Idris Galeta, the South African jazz pianist, died last Friday in Johannesburg, felled by an asthma attack. With his passing, another voice from South Africa’s greatest generation of jazz musicians falls silent—a generation that, in just the past year, has lost figures like Robbie Jansen and Ezrae Ngcukana, as well as the jazz historian and archivist Vincent Kolbe.

Born Cecil Barnard in Cape Town in 1941, Galeta found the piano early, its language becoming his own while he was still a boy. At a high school musical event, he met a slightly older pianist, Abdullah Ibrahim—an encounter that would prove formative. Ibrahim became a mentor and lodestar, guiding Galeta as he began to carve out his place on the local scene.

By the 1960s, exile beckoned. Barnard left for the United States, where he remade himself as Hotep Galeta and entered the restless, electric currents of the jazz world. He played at Woodstock, moved through bands alongside figures such as Jackie McLean, Rene McLean, Archie Shepp, and Herb Alpert, and, in the late 1970s, formed a group with Hugh Masekela and Rene McLean—a meeting of exiled South African and African American sounds.

Home called him back in 1991. Returning to a country on the cusp of transformation, Galeta took up a post at the University of Fort Hare in the Eastern Cape, teaching, mentoring, and performing with a quiet authority. His life traced the long arc of South African jazz itself: from youthful promise, through exile and experimentation, to a homecoming shaped by memory, resilience, and song.

Reflecting on Galeta’s passing, Rene McLean, who was one of his closest friends, 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 pianists 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 “Solo Piano” (corrected), an album of 11 piano solos, to get a sense of his musical genius. RIP.