SATHIMA BEA BENJAMIN & DOLLAR BRAND - African Songbird (1976-2013) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

In 1948, the National Party came to power in South Africa and immediately implemented legislation intended to weaken struggles for social democracy, labour rights and racial equality. These apartheid laws further codified racial segregation and severely limited rights of black people in the country.
There was no room for “natives”, except as maids, cooks and labourers. In this severely segregated context, something modern and international, like jazz, was considered anathema by the apartheid state. As mass opposition to the regime grew during the 1950s, jazz served as one of the prevailing soundtracks of struggle.
This social and political cauldron produced some of South Africa’s greatest musical figures, notably Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, Chris McGregor, Letta Mbulu and Abdullah Ibrahim. And it was that same cauldron that provoked them to flee their country.
Recognition in the American jazz world
One of those exiles, Sathima Bea Benjamin – a singer and composer, and Ibrahim’s life partner – is rarely mentioned in the pantheon of South African artists. This is despite a half-century in the music business and praise from none other than American jazz great Duke Ellington. Nor has she earned full acceptance and recognition in the American jazz world.
In 1959, Benjamin recorded My Songs for You – what should have been the first jazz LP in the history of South African music. But it was never released. Besides the predictable problem of finding a distributor amid rising racial tensions and state repression, the session just wasn’t up to par.
Four years later, Ellington produced a historic recording session with her for Reprise Records. But the label decided she wasn’t commercial enough and shelved the record. It was finally released in 1997 as A Morning in Paris.
The few critics who have paid attention to Benjamin regard her as one of the great musical storytellers.
Benjamin is known for delivering lyrics with the kind of patience and emotion that leaves audiences hanging onto every word. As Jon Pareles, a critic for the New York Times, wrote in 1983, “in song after song, Miss Benjamin could make a word cry out with just a flicker of vibrato”. And yet, from the time she left South Africa in 1962 until close to her death on August 20 2013, Benjamin always had to scuffle for work.
Benjamin was not “African” enough to be marketable, and too “African” or exotic to be taken seriously as a great jazz vocalist. Under apartheid she was classified as a “coloured”. Racial classification was the foundation of all apartheid laws, placing individuals in one of four groups: “native”, “coloured”, “Asian” or ‘white’.!!
She once complained in an interview with me on March 5 2004: “People write books and things about jazz singing and they don’t include me. So what is the reason? Sometimes I think it’s because I don’t come from Georgia.”
As a coloured South African whose repertoire excluded township music or traditional isiXhosa songs, Benjamin has been considered less authentic than, say, Makeba. Although late in her career, she began to sing standards over Cape Town’s unique shuffle rhythms. She fashioned herself as a jazz vocalist and remained squarely in the idiom. Yet Benjamin was as much a product of the struggle to overthrow apartheid as Makeba was. She too composed liberation songs and paeans to her homeland, and worked tirelessly in support of the African National Congress (ANC).
Benjamin and Makeba both became professional singers during apartheid’s formative years, when jazz was hailed as a music of freedom. Jazz in South Africa was an expression of the nation’s defiant present and liberatory future – thoroughly modern, urban, sophisticated and non-racial.
Many of Benjamin’s contemporaries and compatriots, including Makeba, abandoned jazz for township music or indigenous folk songs, or attempted to fuse the genres in an effort to root their music in South African soil. But Benjamin never strayed from her devotion to modern jazz as “the most liberating music on the planet”. web
Tracklist:
1. Africa 21:29
Written-By – Bea Benjamin
2. Music 8:54
Written-By – Bea Benjamin
3. African Songbird 5:13
Written-By – Bea Benjamin
Credits:
Vocals – Sathima Bea Benjamin
Arranged By – Dollar Brand
Bass – Basil Moses, Lionel Beukes, Louis Spears
Conductor – Dollar Brand
Drums – Doug Sydes, Monty Weber
Flute – Basil 'Manenberg' Coetzee
Piano – Dollar Brand
Producer – Rashid Vally
Tenor Saxophone – Basil 'Manenberg' Coetzee
Trumpet – Billy Brooks