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Blue Notes revival: bringing home South Africa’s legendary free jazz gold
We were all kind of rebels," drummer Louis Tebogo Moholo-Moholo recalls, "so, like birds of a feather, we flocked together." He’s talking about the Blue Notes, the legendary jazz band formed in Cape Town in the early 1960s. White composer and pianist Chris McGregor joined forces with some of the most radical young black musicians in the city: alto saxophonist Dudu Pukwana, tenor saxophonist Nikele Moyake, trumpeter Mongezi Feza, bassist Johnny Mbizo Dyani and Moholo-Moholo, the only original Blue Note still alive and working. Apartheid restrictions and the defiant, joyful freedom of the group’s music meant gigs were scarce. The Blue Notes left SA in 1964 for an engagement at the Antibes Jazz Festival in France. Moyake was forced home by illness shortly afterwards; the others stayed. Moholo-Moholo returned home in 2005. Despite international acclaim, he found performance space for his adventurous concepts in SA as scarce as it had been before. Meanwhile, the recordings and achievemen...
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