South Africa: Jazz - 2007 South African Music Awards

South Africa: Jazz - 2007 South African Music Awards

Business Day (Johannesburg)

April 20, 2007
Posted to the web April 20, 2007

Gwen Ansell
Johannesburg

THE year the music died: for jazz, that's how the 2007 South African Music Awards (Sama) will be remembered. The slide started last year, when a revision of categories forced genres with no points of comparison to compete for the same awards.

This year, the triumph -- inevitable, under such circumstances -- of style over substance was sealed.

There were four worthy jazz winners. Bheki Khoza's Getting to Heaven Alive certainly merited its Best Instrumental Jazz Album award; and Paul Hanmer's Prisoner Number One soundtrack its Best Instrumental Album accolade. Moreira Chonguiça and Mark Fransman deservedly shared Best Producer for their work on Chonguiça's The Journey, though it would have been nice to see them getting some recognition for their talent and fire as players too.

Then there was the Simphiwe Dana phenomenon: Dana scooped the awards for Album of the Year, Best Vocal Jazz Album, Best Female Vocalist and Best Contemporary Jazz Album. Already the cries of foul and allegations of corruption or manipulation have begun. They are a perennial in the wake of the music awards -- but whether or not they are justified, Dana's rout of the competition is a matter for concern.

The Album of the Year award is probably deserved, though it remains unclear on what criteria the judgment is based. Certainly, the album One Love Movement on Bantu Biko Street has sold well and various tracks have received huge airplay.

Production -- Bheki Khoza again -- is intelligent in its references to the vocalists of the Skylarks era, and the open-textured arrangements allow for sterling solos from a line-up of talented jazz players. Above all, Dana is certainly an exceptional songwriter. Her songs are catchy, well constructed, and with lyrics solidly in tune with the times.

But perhaps it is time to say more clearly that she is not equally talented as a singer. She has a pleasant, unexceptional voice and crystal-clear diction. She holds a tune adequately. In SA, that puts her in the company of several million other young women, many of whom haven't even made it to the first rounds of Pop Idol, but still languish in the ranks of their local church choirs.

Beyond that, she does nothing that interesting female vocalists do. She doesn't play with phrasing or timing to add more punch to her lyrics. She doesn't explore the chords and structures of her melodies via improvisation. And outside what those inspired instrumentalists bring to her songs, she doesn't groove much, and -- except for those Skylarks pastiches -- swings hardly at all.

The last female vocalist to sweep the field like this was Judith Sephuma. Sephuma is a genuinely interesting jazz singer. Although her albums do not always display them to the full, she has mastered all the "technical" things: swinging, grooving, improvising, phrasing -- without ever becoming a cloned American. Her live performances enchant.

To see One Love Movement on Bantu Biko Street walking away with best female vocalist and best vocal and contemporary jazz awards gives pause for thought, particularly when you consider the competition.

The Rosie's venue at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival last month was packed to the doors only once. Not for US stars such as Jack de Johnette and Lee Konitz, but for reedman Khaya Mahlangu. His set was a blistering extended exploration of the material on his album Khululeka that the rest of us tried to catch from outside, before the crowds got too alarming and the corridor was closed. Mahlangu has paid -- and played -- his dues over many years; today, his musicianship is finer than ever.

He wasn't the only other deserving contender in the contemporary jazz category, but the crowd in Cape Town suggests he could match Dana in audience appeal too, if that is what the judges were assessing.

It may have been. For when you create categories so disparate that no shared criteria are possible, you fall back on the lowest common denominator: commodity value. And Dana, shrewdly styled to reflect the Jozi zeitgeist,has that in buckets.

Dana deserves congratulation on her awards -- hopefully they will allow her a measure of autonomy from the major label machine, and that can only be good for her musical future.

But as this column has suggested before, it is time for jazz to break free of the Sama circus and create an awards system that reflects the diversity and quality of the genre, not merely its marketability.