established 01/04/00 Sustaining the principles of love in action : ubuntu /sharing PORTFOLIO OF CULTURAL JOURNALISM : the doors of culture and learning shall be opened struhuru@gmail.com

In the early eighties, a beer company put on a nation wide jazz talent search. I entered with a band I had at the time and even though I new very little about jazz, my group was chosen for the top five finalists. Johnny had also entered with Sean (his son) and was also chosen. The evening of the competition (held at the Sandton Sun Hotel in Johannesburg) was a stepping stone for me. Even though some smooth jazz group won the prize, a recording contract (nothing has changed), Johnny heard me play my music. He came over to me and told me how much he had enjoyed what I was doing. When I started to play in `76, I used to go and listen to Johnny Fourie, Johnny Boshoff and Tony Moore jamming at a club in Hillbrow and I used to bootleg their shows, go home and work out all the stuff they were playing. So these guys were stars for me. I had actually briefly met Johnny before that evening of the competition at a gig I had with a pianist Ricky Anandale playing standards every Friday and Saturday at a restaurant. Ricky showed me how to walk the bass and I had written all my bass parts out. Nothing improvised. Ricky invited Johnny to sit in with us one night as a special guest and I was extremely excited but I was just this guy in the back. Now after that evening of the competition Johnny got a gig at Spats, the night-club of the Sandton Hotel, playing jazz six nights a week for six months. He put a band together and called me to play bass. I didn't feel I was ready to do a gig like that, as all I knew about jazz was reading the walking bass lines that Ricky had written for me. I turned down Johnny`s gig but he told me, "you only get one chance". After he said that I took on the gig and prayed. Now I had always wanted to go and study music in America but that was too expensive and I never had, and to this day, still haven't had, a bass lesson, so this gig was probably the most important job I ever did. When a guru in India takes on a student, the student is with him every day, learning. Not like the once a week music lessons given in the West. Johnny took me in the breaks each night and showed me my mistakes and how to improvise. Johnny had become my Guru for the next six months. That band had Stan Jones on piano and Duke Makasi on sax who also took advantage of this guru situation. Now Neill Ettridge was playing drums and when he decided to do another gig Johnny got hold of this youngster, Kevin Gibson to finish the last month. When Spats came to the end, I was ready to play my own music again, but this time at a much higher level, so the first choice for my group was Johnny.

In the eighties there were many clubs in Joburg. The most important one was Jamesons. When you went down those stairs and entered that place you knew you were in an exciting place and you would hear interesting bands and the apartheid bullshit stayed outside. Another great club was Rumours in Yeoville where we would all hang out on Sundays to play the jam sessions. That place was packed and they had a real piano just like Jamesons as well as Kippies. There is not a single jazz club in Joburg that can boast a piano today, probably the most important instrument in the history of jazz music and the core centre of any jazz club, world-wide. I played with my band Abstractions on average three times a week to small audiences and did a solo bass spot at the ‘Black Sun' in Hillbrow at midnight every Friday where the Genuines where playing.

Abstractions was a fantastic group and we worked hard. We would every now and then do block rehearsals of five days in a row to work on the new material I kept on writing and everyone was there to make it happen. The band had Johnny and Jo Runde on guitars, and Neill Ettridge on drums. With Abstractions I experimented with sound and the band performed at a very intense level. Every art page spoke about the band and Shifty records recorded and released our first and only album. But the music went over the heads of most people, it was just too different and in 1987 I realised that if I wanted to make some progress I had to go overseas.