African jazz music usually refers to the jazz scene and style found in South Africa, with roots in the early half of the 20th century and heavily influenced by different American jazz styles and mixed with native dance rhythms. Today, African jazz is a popular genre of music in South Africa. Large festivals are held every year, and jazz singers are popular and well-known.
History
South African jazz started to grow in the 1920s, when radio and recording equipment were being popularized in the area. Jazz at this time was heavily influenced by New Orleans-style music and ragtime, since it was introduced by American performers and became popular among the black-populated living areas in South Africa. Over time, native elements added to jazz music in South Africa, and popularity grew even more in the 1950s as experimentation with jazz music took place by South Africans, instead of listening to foreign recordings.
Style
Originally influenced by New Orleans' swing jazz and American bebop (including syncopated beats), jazz in South Africa quickly gained a distinct style. Native musicians experimented with different styles from America and merged them with native and tribal elements. Zulu stomping dance rhythms merged into the syncopated beats. Jazz turned into a faster type of music, with more influence as dance music than just pure instrumental expression. Blues style incorporated quickly, along with hip-hop and rock, and all grew as part of this jazz.
Significance
Just as in America, jazz in South Africa started as a type of escape for racial groups during oppressive eras. Daily life for the black population in South Africa during apartheid did not offer much pleasure, joy or ease. American jazz began as an expression of a similar life, and jazz in South Africa became more than just music for listening and dancing. Black South Africans began composing and experimenting with music, creating an entire new style and creative edge to jazz. Composers and musicians like Chris McGregor, pianist, and Louis Moholo pushed African jazz into a never before seen style and left the country, many dying in exile before seeing the abolishment of apartheid.
Potential
Jazz in South Africa, not just a form of music for citizens to enjoy, grew in potential as a protest against a racially intolerant era---not silent, but passive. African jazz musicians gave younger generations their own voice, brought in from a similar situation and changed. Growth in African jazz happened quickly and changed the music into its own distinct style. No longer just the New Orleans and bebop styles from America, South African jazz became its own, and grew. The ability for black musicians to inspire and resist, without violence, the unjust world they lived in gave an entire country hope for a different world.
Today
African jazz today is among the most popular styles in South Africa. Festivals are held every year, with all types of styles and original forms heard all around. The North Sea Jazz Festival in Cape Town draws in large crowds and many well-known South African jazz musicians from today and from the apartheid time-line. These festivals are not just celebrations of a victory for equality, but an experience of music and original jazz in South Africa. Workshops are held in the hope that young musicians will find inspiration and create new jazz music, incorporating their own lives, styles and brands, forging ahead in the African jazz scene.
