Jazz Archives - Consciousness.co.za Magazine

(Re) Taking off of the African Blues

Xolani Mthombeni — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 10:52:20 +0000

Throughout the past eight decades the world has been presented with the supremacy of John Coltrane: – the timelessness exuding from Take the “A” Train composition of Duke Ellington, or the home longing and evoking Hugh Masekela’s Stimela. At a particular instance, the courting and metaphoric Mbongeni Ngema’s Stimela Sase Zola, and now a paced [...]

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A Slanting Wind of the Blues

Xolani Mthombeni — Wed, 02 Oct 2024 08:27:05 +0000

As the step into spring has blossomed, the scent of pollen outside calls for newer, brighter, and better beginnings especially that of the diaspora and the African spirited realm. What better way to usher it in than with the drizzle of blues a courtesy extended by the Motherland International Blues and Jazz Festival. For the [...]

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A Deft Depth Connection

Xolani Mthombeni — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 08:50:57 +0000

The trumpet is brass wind instrument as old as time, dating back Before Christ, the (B.C) eon. It is an instrument that connotes depth, attention and eminent calls, be it ethereal spaces, upheavals or revolts. Even in social calls the trumpet is a clarion voice of change. This thread sounded at the twenty fifth Standard [...]

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A relevant jazz anvil

Xolani Mthombeni — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 17:55:44 +0000

We live in a rapid paced world where not so long ago waterless systems, heated towel rails and digitised homes with timed lighting seemed and sounded light years ahead. In tandem, this was also when the colours and flavours of jazz and music enriched our homes, hearts and spaces. In timeline intervals, it is an [...]

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An Alive Jazz Delight

Xolani Mthombeni — Sun, 31 Mar 2024 14:29:01 +0000

As a people, our inclined notion that mother nature is able to take care of herself is irrefutable. Throughout times, whether sunrise or sunset, without cessation, she evolves and re affirms herself as a persevering entity. Much like jazz, her modulation is gradual, and in the same length, definite. Under the unpredictable gleam of today’s [...]

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Seeing the Jazz Fruit

Xolani Mthombeni — Tue, 26 Sep 2023 08:00:20 +0000

Living in a rapidly and constantly changing world of music, as practitioners, singers and instrumentalists, being well informed is a necessity. By fulfilling this, it creates fertile ground and a firm foundation for being successful in their artistry. It is indubitably sensible to applaud and acknowledge the dynasty of musicians that incessantly, in valour and [...]

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A Long Weight

Xolani Mthombeni — Fri, 17 Nov 2017 08:27:15 +0000

An implicit sound of silence tends to trickle into the worlds of our residence when we should banter and converse. At times, in avoidance to broach subject matters, the cliché “silence is golden” has become a suitable euphemistic imputation to quietness. In many instances, the disease of not speaking is a fertile land to breed pandemoniums. Of [...]

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Transposing the standard of oneness

Xolani Mthombeni — Tue, 14 Feb 2017 16:07:58 +0000

Financial Service Providers serve as pockets of our respective countries while keeping our interests secured, and our economies afloat. Their valuable assets are made up of versatile mechanisms and communities in a volatile surrounding, notwithstanding its populace. A fraction of these organisations seek to better individual and collectives’ accrual royalties. However, the Old Mutual Group [...]

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Floating into a genre, propelling to understanding a mother sound

Xolani Mthombeni — Mon, 03 Oct 2016 09:20:36 +0000

Jazz is an American classic and therefore we present it to you as such, – without nonsense, funny hats and funny hair. These are the words that kick off one of a few classic big band recordings. When Buddy Rich uttered this statement he was asked, What is jazz? Over the years, the question has [...]

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Not gone and never to be forgotten

Xolani Mthombeni — Wed, 07 Sep 2016 13:36:36 +0000

In the arts, appellations such as legends, doyennes, divas and heirs tend to be utilized out of context. To an extent it has become a cliché and a handhold to describe contemporaries that are far from eminence. A tiny tattered lexicon defines a hero/heroine as a person who is admired for their courage. While on [...]

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