A Bewitching Devroop Jazz Quintet performance at Linder Auditorium casts a spell on the audience
By Edward Tsumele, CITYLIFE/ARTS Editor
As soon as I arrive at the parking lo of Wits Education Campus on 27 St. Andrews Road, Parktown I started running. Actually puffing and huffing towards the Linder Auditorium. Those who know me well will tell you that I have time sensibilities. But this time I was lot. That got me worried, extremely worried because I was there to attend something special, the second JPO Symphonic Festival on Sunday, September 23, 2024. This festival, who se launch announcement I attended last year at the Mandela Sanctuary, the home of former President Nelson Mandela where the Chief Executive Officer and Artistic Director of The Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra Bongani Tembe and award winning trumpeter Marcus Wyatt announced this a unique festival on the South African music scene, that see the cousin genres of jazz and classical music meet. Even collide to create a sound that is sweet to the ear and stimulates the mind. I am lucky in that I have grown to like both genres and you can imagine having both sounds, fused in the most creative way available to the human mind to create that sound that makes you feel that you are at a jazz concert, sort and yet at the same time you are at a classical music concert. Again. Sort of.
The thing is what we heard on Sunday, the Second Concert of this series, which was preceded on Friday, September 2023, amidst a biting cold spell in Gauteng (Coward me I missed that one), with the South African Symphonic Jazz Songbook (Chapter 2), conducted my Wyatt and featuring Siya Mthembu, Siya Makuzeni and Tutu Puone supported by a full orchestra was something to talk about for a long time to come.
The hybrid sound created by the performance of this leg of the festival dubbed Devroop Jazz Quintet, conducted by a very experienced conductor, Eddie Clayton, whose CV is quite impressive, featuring the hugely talented saxophonist KerendraDevroop, Magesh Naidoo, Romy Brauteseth, Roland Moses and Rob Watson, was an impressive presentation that saw jazz and classical music merge in a sort of fashion that could be described as a marriage blessed by the ancestors. I even forgave myself for missing two songs of the presentation, Steve Lukather and Randy Goodrum’s Anna, arranged for the orchestra by Trino Jimenez, who appeared to be the go to arranger when it comes to KerendraDevroop’s concerts as the two have collaborated on a number of projects for years, according to Devroop, and the other song I missed being Sting’s Fragile (arranged by Trino Jimenez).
All forgiven and forgotten, I was ready to receive and enjoy the flow of this concert. When the artists, who were backed by a full orchestra, performed McCoy Mrubata’s CapeSamba (arranged by Trino Jiminez), that got me into the mood and made me to be under the spell of this concert. Not that I resisted though. I was a willing partner in being enslaved by this sound for the hour that this concert took place, with a break in between.
Other songs that were performed included re-arranged pop and jazz sounds such as the famous Mrubata song Merton’s Place (arranged for the orchestra by Trino Jimenez), a song inspired by the altruistic efforts of a Merton of Cape Town, who according to Devroop, risked being arrested during apartheid by accommodating black artists in his home. A human gesture, an expression of Ubuntu, that today we take for granted, was illegal under the apartheid laws.
Among other songs, that worked magic in my imagination, include LakutshoniLanga, that for the longest of time, the public generally believed that it was created by Miriam Makeba, for she is the one who made it popular in the public imagination in general and in jazz circles in particular. Folk, the reality is the composer of that song is none other than Makwenkwe “Mackay” Davashe (1920–1972), full stop. Devroop was clever enough to reiterate this fact. That is actually another thing with these kinds of concerts –the leaders of such concerts inter-space performances with an educational element without sounding condescending. Both Clayton and Devroop were good at that during the concert.
For example, we learned that the famous Bill Joel song New York State of Mind, he composed it in 15 minutes while he was in a Greyhound bus going home. This indeed is an expression of extraordinary genius.
This concert calmed me down so well that by the time I came out of the Linder, heading home, I was so comfortable with myself to the extent that I stopped myself from whistling for the fear that people would think that I had gone crazy. Maybe crazy I had become because of being bewitched by the Devroop Jazz Quintet, with a full orchestra, and all being adorned in black made the stage a mosaic of black, silver and brown with the instruments that carried the music to the higher level of mental awareness for the audience that braved a rather mild weather on Sunday to enjoy themselves.
.On Tuesday, September 24, 2024, Heritage Day, Linder Auditorium is hosting Inkosi UShaka: King Shaka, a Avisuion, A Nation, A Destiny at 3pm. The composer is Warren Bessey, narrator Ntokozo “isingqazu’ Ngcobo and the conductor is Daniel Boico, featuring acclaimed soloists and Gauteng choristers.Tick3ts are priced from R100-R300 via Quicket.