Abdullah Ibrahim

Abdullah Ibrahim (born Adolph Johannes Brand on 9 October 1934 and formerly known as Dollar Brand) is a South African pianist and composer.

His music reflects many of the musical influences of his childhood in the multicultural port areas of Cape Town, ranging from traditional African songs to the gospel of the AME Church and ragas, to more modern jazz and other Western styles. Ibrahim is considered the leading figure in the subgenre Cape jazz. Within jazz, his music particularly reflects the influence of Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington.

With his late wife, the jazz singer Sathima Bea Benjamin, he is father to the New York underground rapper Jean Grae, as well as to a son, Tsakwe.

ancestry

from https://www.theguardian.com/music/2001/dec/08/jazz

He was born in 1934 in Kensington, Cape Town, reputed to be the worst ghetto in South Africa. Baptised Adolph Johannes Brand, he found out only in adulthood that his father, Sentso, was from the Sotho people, and had been murdered when his son was four. Ibrahim's mother, Rachel, was from a "coloured" (mixed-race) family . Ibrahim says: "There was heavy, simmering racism - anti-African feeling - in our communities. My grandparents gave me their name so I'd be classified as coloured; I thought they were my parents. I grew up believing that my mother was my sister. That code of silence was created by the system. I was saddled with a lot of bitterness at an early age." At 17 he ran away to look for his real father, "ending up drifting into trouble". When his grandmother, Margaret, was dying, "she sent me a note saying my father was a Sotho, murdered by a so-called coloured thug. We've never been able to find the dossier."

awards

• Abdullah Ibrahim was presented the South African Music Lifetime Achievement Award in a ceremony in 2007 at the Sun City Super Bowl. The awards are given by the Recording Industry of South Africa.
• He was awarded the Best Male Artist for his album, ‘Senzo’, at the 15th Annual MTN South African Music Awards in 2009 at the Sun City Super Bowl.
• In 2009, the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg conferred upon him an Honorary Doctorate of Music. He was presented the Order of Ikhamanga by President Jacob Zuma of South Africa.

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notes

From When Thelonious Monk met Dollar Brand AFRICA IS A COUNTRY, CULTURE, MUSIC MAY 12, 2011 by SEAN JACOBS

From historian Robin Kelley’s retelling of the day in 1964 that Thelonious Monk met the South African jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim, then still known as Dollar Brand:

… [Monk and his wife, Nellie] were at Kongresshaus in Zurich where Monk gave another successful concert. After the show, a tall, lanky black man with a heavy accent came on stage and introduced himself as Dollar Brand–one of those unusual names Monk dug. He told Monk that he was a piano player from South Africa who had just arrived in Switzerland with his wife, singer Bea Benjamin, and his band, bassist Johnny Gertze and drummer Makaya Ntshoko. They had fled their country in the aftermath of the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960. The trio had a regular gig at the Cafe Africana and he invited Monk and Nellie to come hear them if they had time. He didn’t stay very long, but before he left, “[I] thanked him for the inspiration. [Monk] looked at me for a time and then said: “You’re the first piano player to tell me that.”
... Whether or not Monk ever grasped the impact he had on Brand, he did discover that night in Zurich just how far his music had traveled.

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This legendary South African pianist was the subject of two documentaries – A Brother with Perfect Timing, and A Struggle for Love.

This South African jazz musician said, “People say that slaves were taken from Africa. This is not true: People were taken from Africa, among them healers and priests, and were made into slaves”

Read more at http://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/abdullah-ibrahim-3753.php#C...

• http://abdullahibrahim.co.za/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_Ibrahim
  • Official website, biography page
  • Abdullah Ibrahim page at Enja Records
  • Maya Jaggi, "The Guardian Profile: Abdullah Ibrahim - The sound of freedom", The Guardian, 8 December 2001.
  • "Abdullah Ibrahim", 100 Jazz Profiles, BBC.
  • Abdullah Ibrahim page, Africa is a Country.