In association with Concerts SA, legendary jazz pianist Andile Yenana presents Beyond Octave Trends Tour- 7 performances, 4 cities, 3 different provinces- with his band Umngqungqo Wabantu.
Conceived as a musical metaphor, Beyond Octave Trends is a decade-long project through which jazz pianist, composer and teacher Andile Yenana aims to engage mainly legacy audiences such as the youth (who he will also involve centrally as band members), who will carry the fabric and universal principles of jazz into the future.
This touring project seeks to also challenge himself and fellow musicians- the nation as well- to go beyond our music, to ensure it embraces and reflects our greatest ideals of our society. Because music, and especially jazz, is the way society can reimagine itself by embracing its highest universal ideals while watering its own seeds, its own roots, to nurture the voice of its collective conscience.
Andile Yenana will tour with his band Umngqungqo Wabantu, in various formations. The band celebrates the modern jazz shaped in the Cape, primarily among Xhosa-speaking peoples. The roots of Xhosa language and music track back to the Khoisan people whose sounds, instruments and collective music-making still echo today: ‘clicks’; flutes and bows; the heptatonic scale; the oscillating harmonics of a bow’s stretched string; a polyphony of human and instrumental voices, each cycling through its own sequence of notes and beats and adding its own “salt” to the tune.
In the Cape Town leg of the tour, Umngqungqo Wabantu will play in quartet format, with Yenana on piano joined by Mark Fransman (sax), Clement Benny (drums) and Dalisu Ndlazi (bass). Then in the Eastern Cape, the band will perform as a quintet, with Tumi Mogorosi (drums), Sakhile Simanio (trumpet), Siya Charles (trombone), and Nhlanhla Nevill Radebe (bass). The closing Durban leg of the tour will see Umngqungqo Wabantu grow to a sextet: Dalisu Ndlazi (bass), Phumlani Mtiti (saxophone), Zolani Rafuza (drums), Kgethi Nkotsi (trombone) and Thabo Skhakhane (trumpet).
The Beyond Octave Trends Tour will see Andile go back to the seed, the Eastern Cape, where he was born, to perform, to inform, to instil a love of the one human race, to find his way in the world to a world reimagined beyond octave trends. “Our real legacy is in the legacy of the seed, the genesis”, Yenana says.
Beyond Octave Trends is the story of legacy. The legacy of jazz music. The legacy of freedom, freedom from ignorance; dignity, the dignity of humanity transcending false divisions; and posterity, the future role of the present history created now.
Yenana considers there is a need to transcend beyond octaves into the hearts, the minds, the uniting spirit of the nation, which locates its greatest expression in the arts, in music, and particularly in jazz- a genre that united the races long before recent democracies embraced non-racialism. Jazz in South Africa had already been reciting the freedom verse, the dignity of a bridge to societal harmony, and the freedom as dignity chorus, because giants of the time, men and women far too numerous to mention, dared to envision a future beyond octaves, that today allows jazz to breathe freely and for freedom to breathe new air, new life, and new freedom to dare to be great.
In the pianist own words: “For the tree to grow, the heavens must water its roots. The fruit must therefore recognize its genesis in the unseen seed beneath, the beginning of it all. And so, Beyond Octave Trends seeks for us to go back where we started, as a nation, as artists, as jazz musicians and composers, to locate the seed of the tree so we know and understand whence we, the fruit, came. For that to happen, we must go Beyond Octave Trends; beyond all trends, to the seed of our legacy, the legacy of one human race.”
“I want SA to remember her highest and greatest ideals: freedom, human dignity, equality, and openness. Jazz expresses the greatest universal ideals, by its very nature. Therefore, jazz has a way of sending this message, that we must remember our ideals into the future, into the realm of legacy, pertinently and poignantly.”
Andile Yenana’s Beyond Octave Trends Tour is supported by Concerts SA through the Music Mobility Fund, a funding mechanism which offers opportunities for South African musicians to undertake live music tours.
Artist Links
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Events Listing
Cape Town – Jazz In The Native Yards @ Kwa Sec [Performance]
Saturday 23rd September – 4pm – R 100
Address: 52 Ny 138 St, Gugulethu, Cape Town
Bookings: 060 960 8935 / koko@mweb.co.za
Cape Town – Jazz In The Native Yards @ Kwa Sec [Performance]
Monday 25th September – 3pm – R 100
Address: 52 Ny 138 St, Gugulethu, Cape Town
Bookings: 060 960 8935 / koko@mweb.co.za
King William’s Town – Steve Biko Centre [Performance]
Friday 29th September – 6.30pm – R 60
Address: 2429 Mbeka St, King William’s Town
Bookings: 043 605 6700 / events@sbf.org.za
East London – The Velvet Lounge [Performance]
Saturday 30th September – 9pm – R 60
Address: 25 Pontoon Rd, Parkside, East London
Bookings: 043 722 1076 / alfredo@thevelvetjazzlounge.co.za
Durban – The Headroom Studio [Performance]
Friday 6th October – 7pm – R 60
Address: 21 Bridlington road, Seaview, Durban
Bookings: 031 459 0840 / marius@theheadroom.co.za
Durban – The Jazzy Rainbow [Performance]
Saturday 7th October – 7pm – R 70 including a free drink (T&C)
Address: 93 Smiso Nkwanyana Rd, Morningside, Durban
Bookings: 031 303 8398 / jazzyrainbow@mweb.co.za
