Shared goals, trust and friendship … this is where the jol is:

It’s late January and 70-something jazz couple Darius and Catherine Brubeck are freezing their butts off. But that’s what happens when you decide you must start living like adults and move out of swinging London Town. 

We are on Zoom — I’m sweating in sweltering Joburg and they are layered in scarves, coats and gloves in the tiny English town of Rye.

“We don’t have any heat and it’s minus two,” Cathy tells me.

“My word!”

Luckily their sense of humour hasn’t frozen.

“Yes, it’s a little hard — we’re working in a Dickensian accounting office,” she says with a smile.

And as could be expected of two people who have been married for 41 years, they finish each other’s sentences, remain amused by anecdotes well known to each other and fill in memory gaps because they were both there when South African jazz history was made.

“We lived in London for 10 years, right in the middle of Camden Town” — it’s Darius talking — “you know with the Camden market, the Camden Lock Bridge, the mural of Amy Winehouse on the wall of something. And, about six, seven years ago, we decided we should start living like grownups and move out of all that, although it was great.”

They are into literary history and visited Lamb House in Rye, Sussex, which was the home of many writers, including Henry James from 1897 to 1914.

“We came down to Rye to see that and then we thought, well, Rye is rather nice,” Darius says. “And it’s just beyond the periphery of London, which makes it much more affordable. But London is quite reachable from here. Europe used to be … but we hadn’t anticipated Brexit.”

Darius is the son of American jazz giant Dave Brubeck, whose 1959 release Take Five is still the best-selling jazz single of all time. 

He is also a jazz pianist, composer, author and retired university professor who, with Catherine, has written Playing the Changes, a memoir about their 23 years in South Africa. 

It was recently published by UKZN Press, with an international version from the University of Illinois Press imminent. 

Darius introduced the first university jazz course in Africa and they both ran the internationally famous Centre for Jazz & Popular Music on the Durban campus of the University of KwaZulu-Natal. 

Then there is a documentary film, also titled Playing the Changes, covering related material — it will be on the festival circuit soon. 

But there is more. Earlier this year, Ubuntu Music reissued the album We Have Waited Too Long, the restored and remastered recording by the Jazzanians, a multiracial ensemble from 1988. 

They were, as Darius writes in the sleeve notes, “a unique band of exceptionally talented South African students at the University of Natal (Durban) where I launched the first university Jazz Studies course in South Africa in 1984. 

“‘Official’ jazz studies were only in their fourth year when the band was invited to the US to perform at the National Association of Jazz Educators conference. 

“This recording is a joyful expression of the creative interaction apartheid tried to stifle.”

So, how does it feel to have a book, a documentary and a record out at the same time?

“Well, it feels good. I mean, this is the sort of thing you can’t anticipate, and you could only plan it if you were very much a superstar … you could say book, movie, album — throw money at it and it would work,” says Darius. “But this all worked kind of by itself — a lot of things aligned and just fell into sync.”

It started with the book. Darius’s mother Iola, who died in 2014, “kept every letter, every clipping, every concert programme, everything that we sent to her. And she was just an instinctive curator. And she encouraged us.” 

The Brubecks started writing Playing the Changes in 2017, thanks to a grant from the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study. 

The fascinating story of the Jazzanians forms an integral part of the book. While their existence was short — just three years with only one album — some band members went on to become South African jazz greats in their own right: Johnny Mekoa (trumpet), Andrew Eagle (guitar), Zim Ngqawana (sax), Nick Paton (sax), Victor Masondo (bass), Kevin Gibson (drums), Melvin Peters (piano), Rick van Heerden (sax), and Lulu Gontsana (drums). Sadly, Mekoa, Ngqawana and Gontsana are no longer with us — the reissue is dedicated to their memory.

And, as Darius explains, he was their mentor; he was setting a standard for the band: “They were kind of ubiquitous for a while but it was a student group. So, people graduate, they move on, they go back to where they came from.”

And Cathy adds wistfully: “And die too early.”

The band’s impact was exceptional, especially at a time when apartheid South Africa was — rightly — a pariah state. 

Before their 1987-88 tour to the US, Darius cleared everything with the Mass Democratic Movement internally and with the Black Caucus in the US. It helped that the band was politically inclined. 

While Darius was teaching full time, Cathy was responsible for organising the tour and raising funds, internationally and locally, and coming from unexpected sources.

“We were actually offered money that would have been used for the Natal University rugby team but nobody wanted them to play overseas,” says Cathy.

The Jazzanians adopted their name out of an allegiance to the struggle and a love of wordplay, juggling jazz with Azania. 

“A press reporter in the US mistakenly called us the ‘Jazz Onions’, no doubt mishearing a South African accent,” Cathy recounts in the book. 

“When Victor Masondo read this, he could hardly stop laughing long enough to say, ‘We didn’t come 8?000 miles with such a name!’”

So, who’s idea was the name?

“At least four of us claimed to have come up with the name and now I don’t remember who ultimately got the credit.”

There is no doubt about the album’s title, We Have Waited Too Long, though. It’s named after a track written by the band’s guitarist, Eagle. That title, says Darius, “almost feels prophetic now … we have waited too long for South Africa coming together.”

The reissue of the album has a new, almost celebratory cover, incorporating the democratic South African flag in its artwork. “Yeah, it looks better than the original,” says Darius. 

On the back is a band photograph from Cathy’s collection — Mekoa is blowing his trumpet, and the other guys look amused, as though someone has made a joke. 

They also look cool, happy and kind of pleasantly surprised that they have recorded an album.

“Everything worked because they had a great sense of humour,” remembers Darius. “People didn’t tend to mess with me because I was just foreign and didn’t know the rules. And I was a bit famous and they would look bad if they did. And I could only look good if they did.

“And Johnny was just so … he was flexible and sharp and smart — and he could switch codes and attitudes like nobody. His Afrikaans was perfect. But it wasn’t just being a great linguist. He would get a vibe and meet it and match it and, you know, somehow get through situations that might have been difficult. He just had that capacity.

“And the other guys were all … I think our attitude toward everything wasn’t to make a point. It was just, you know, to make it work. If we can make the situation work, the point is made.”

The band members came from diverse political backgrounds — some black consciousness, others United Democratic Front — but they sounded as tight as the closest of comrades. 

“We had one result in mind,” says Darius. “We got tight because that is the result we wanted. And there was the motivation of going overseas.

“They were all good friends, too. Travelling with them to perform, we’d hire a bus to go to Joburg together and they’d have a great time singing, doing little skits mimicking politicians, skits of each other …”

“Of us!”

“Yes, of us. So that’s kind of how we rolled … so you have the ideal motivation of shared goals, trust, friendship. And, you know, music is something where you can really tell … It doesn’t take long to see whether someone is trying or not.”

In the book, Cathy tells a great road story: “Being on the road is addictive and one is always ready for the next adventure,” she starts. “Road stories are the usual hilarious and frustrating components of a musician’s life and our many hotel adventures illustrate the First and Third World nature of South Africa and its jazz scene.”

Yup, apartheid South Africa — with a diverse and multiracial band on the road.

“I’ll start in 1983 with hotels and recount our stay in downtown Villiers, roughly 160km from Johannesburg,” Cathy goes on. “We had overestimated the number of petrol stations on the old main road, and we found we had to drive into this verkrampte (conservative) town in search of fuel. We checked at the police station, where the commanding officer was in uniform, but barefoot. He informed us that there wasn’t any petrol to be had at that late hour and we would have to stay overnight, and he gave us directions to a hotel.

“The first mistake I made was to enter the bar/lounge, which was for men only. We were barely over the threshold and the hotelier was angry and horrified — even though there were no other customers present. 

“From the doorway we explained that we needed accommodation for the night. Despite there being absolutely no evidence of other human beings or cars, the man said they had no accommodation. We figured that this rejection was caused by prejudicial factors …”

I ask if We Have Waited Too Long is merely a historical document. And, also, what would the Brubecks want the listener — here in 2024 — to take from it?

“I want him or her to love the music for what it is,” says Darius. “You know, it’s possible to have a historical document that you don’t love musically and still regard as important, but no, I think this record has inherent musical value.

“You put on the first track and there’s something there that puts you in the moment, that gets you right back to that time,” he says. 

“And you hear it, and you want to move. And the personalities come through so strongly. Plus, the Jazzanians were very central to our whole experience and they feature largely in the book too.”

And it is enjoyable and transcends the historical, I say, making you want to dance, to go out on the jol. Both Brubecks smile and nod. 

We have all waited too long for this jol.

– The Mail & Guardian

What is wrong with India’s opposition?:

At a recent seminar I moderated in the southern Indian state of Kerala panellists, barring one from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), stated that democratic institutions were under threat in the country. 

They said that authoritarianism had spread its tentacles so wide that the Indian state was able to insulate itself from pushback. In fact, there was no pushback, they regretted.

One of the panellists, John Brittas, a star parliamentarian representing the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was among the more than 140 opposition MPs expelled from the house for seeking the home minister’s statement over a security breach in the lower house of parliament (the Lok Sabha). His expulsion has since been revoked.

Stein Ringen, professor emeritus at Oxford University who has authored several serious works on democracy, was at the seminar as an observer. When the floor was open for people to ask questions, his were pertinent: “Why isn’t the opposition resisting enough? Why aren’t the anti-BJP parties able to put up a brave fight to defend democratic rights?”

None of the panellists, including yours truly, had any convincing answer to offer to that query. But it made me think. What on earth is wrong with the Indian opposition? 

We all know that the Modi government is forging ahead with its Hindu-first policy and unleashing its central investigation agencies on rival politicians, some of whom have reportedly defected to save themselves from corruption scandals. 

Here is an example — former opposition Congress leader Himanta Biswa Sarma, now the BJP’s chief minister in the north-eastern state of Assam, was embroiled in a graft case but nothing was heard of the inquiries into it as soon as he defected and joined the ruling party in 2015.

This is a pattern we have seen many more times as the BJP has grown inorganically by engineering defection in the opposition ranks even after losing elections in key states. 

It has successfully split multiple political parties, including its former allies, and entered into alignments with regional parties in the north-east of India and elsewhere to strengthen its presence as well as to oust its opponents from power.

Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi won a second term in 2019, the opposition has been in disarray, to say the least. Now, with him expecting to win a third term in the elections to be held just weeks from now, the opposition remains divided and appears vastly outmatched.

On his tour of the country, Ringen said that, more than the typical behaviour of an authoritarian government, he was concerned about the opposition, its politics of grievance and its defeatist mindset.

He is spot-on, although the ruling party deserves blame for using every ounce of the power at its disposal to undo the gains of secularism and neutralise governmental institutions. These include the judiciary, which stood up to the might of former prime minister Indira Gandhi in her prime, and the election commission, which is meant to ensure free and fair polls.

The government has also drummed up majoritarianism, stating that Hinduism, which has survived centuries of invasions and conversions, is in grave danger. Noted Indian sociologist Ashis Nandy has called this trend the “Abrahamisation of Hinduism”. 

The BJP has also picked up from the Zionist playbook its perpetual victim card — that Hindus will soon be outnumbered unless they cease distinguishing politics from religion. That 80% of Indians are Hindus is today a footnote of contemporary history, thanks to a pliant mainstream media and the formidable propaganda machinery of the government.

The BJP has also brought in key changes to Indian laws and has amended the Constitution to give Hindus the impression that the so-called wrongs of the past are being righted. 

Among them is the revocation of the special status given to the Muslim-majority north-western state of Jammu and Kashmir, which is now a Union Territory, meaning under the direct control of the central government through its lieutenant governor. 

Another example is the Citizenship Amendment Act, which discriminates against Muslims who are migrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh and prevents them from acquiring Indian citizenship. Those favoured for citizenship under this new law, notified on 11 March, are Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists and Parsis.

Not surprisingly, since Modi came to power in 2014, Muslims have largely been pushed to the fringes of society and his policies have stripped many of them in lowly jobs of their livelihoods, including in the meat trade, auto repair and informal sector. 

Together, in both houses of the Indian parliament, the BJP has nearly 400 MPs of which not a single person is a Muslim. India is home to about 200 million Muslims — the world’s third-largest Muslim population after Indonesia and Pakistan.

When Ringen tells you that he is disappointed in the political culture of India, what immediately comes to the fore is the helplessness displayed by the opposition. 

They are in complaining mode against the BJP whose leaders, especially Modi and his deputy Amit Shah, are working hard in perpetual campaign mode — like the early Mughals they detest — whether or not there are elections.

Modi is a tremendously charismatic leader and, as he faces his third general election in a row, significant signs of opposition to this are nowhere to be seen.

Having won crucial state elections over the past few months, unseating the Congress from two of them, the BJP appears confident. Many of its leaders don’t even see competition, in sharp contrast with the last general election in 2019 — which nonetheless reduced the Congress’ tally in the Lok Sabha to its lowest ever. 

While the 2014 election was seen as a vote for change, in which Modi was pitched as the moderniser India badly needed, this one has seen the incumbent government playing the nationalist card to the hilt. 

This time around, the opposition seems missing in action in many areas of the poll battle, especially in the northern states that account for the largest number of seats in the Lok Sabha. True, there was an effort to stitch up a large coalition in a bold attempt to batter the BJP-led alliance (the BJP enjoys a simple majority in parliament on its own) but that has fizzled out. 

The man who took the initiative, the chief minister of the eastern state of Bihar, Nitish Kumar, is now himself part of the BJP alliance. 

Last June, Kumar met disparate political parties in the opposition and a month later floated a platform called INDIA. Conceived as a counterweight to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, it crumbled within months, thanks to desertions and disunity among its constituents. 

At the same time, the National Democratic Alliance is growing larger thanks to a perception that it is on a strong wicket ahead of the national polls. Instead of resisting, more Congress leaders and regional parties are looking to tie up with the BJP, which, meanwhile, wants to leave nothing to chance to ensure a win — and Modi expects the BJP to win more than 400 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha.

The opposition — comprising a constellation of centrists, leftists and provincialists — can keep comparing today’s India to 1930s Germany, accuse Modi of bottling the nationalist genie and resign themselves to their fate. 

Or they can fight back. 

Distressingly, they seem to have chosen the former option.

NP Ullekh is a writer, journalist and political commentator based in New Delhi. He is the executive editor of the newsweekly Open and author of three nonfiction books: War Room: The People, Tactics and Technology Behind Narendra Modi’s 2014 Win; The Untold Vajpayee: Politician and Paradox and Kannur: Inside India’s Bloodiest Revenge Politics. His book on Cuba, part travelogue and part political commentary, is due for release in the next few months.

– The Mail & Guardian

Vote of no confidence? Malema announces Shivambu’s exit from KZN: The Economic Freedom Fighters leader said the party’s secretary general, Marshall Dlamini, would replace Shivambu as its national deployee in the province

– The Mail & Guardian

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