iMbizo yamaKhono - se04 UBUNTU
iMbizo yamaKhono is an expansive Afrocentric quality free music education Web Series. In this series of short music education documentaries star performers, composers and wisdom keepers explore music education through their own unique lens.
In Season 4
Each episode is 15 minutes in length following the 3 act structure. The first act is the historic and heritage origins of the protagonist. The second act is the cultural journey of the protagonist and the third act is their contribution to community.
Season 4, uBuntu profiles five unique wisdom keepers of South African musical culture and heritage in a hybrid documentary style with live recordings and interviews mixed with cut-aways, archives and personal memoires in a dynamic story.
Each education documentary is accompanied with a Pre-Task and Post-Task worksheet engaging the student in further research and musical learning beyond the documentary. A bonus question facilitates knowledge and skills to be shared in an inspired, collaborative and innovative way.
Released in September on Youtube Channel @jazzuhuru, Season 4 comprises 5 new episodes:
Afrikan Safari with Morri Natti
Afrikan Safari follows the journey of Morri Natti a Maasai boy from Kenya relocated to South Africa. A musical anthropologist and fulltime musician for South Africa’s shift to the New South Africa. Morri takes his listeners on a journey through different kinds of music using his own compositions and the many folk songs he has learned on his travels. His unique cross-cultural style, which he calls “mashariki muziki”, combines influences from all over Africa and the world, including Zimbabwean chimurenga, South African mbaqanga and township jive, as well as blues, reggae and even Latin American music. He sings songs in a variety of Southern African languages including Maasai, Kiswahili, isiZulu, isiXhosa, English, Afrikaans, Sesotho, Nyanja, and Shona.
Morri’s mother always encouraged him to keep an open mind. She would say, “Your mind is like a parachute: it can only work if it's open”. What do you think of this idea? Where do you think you can open your own mind?
Morri is well known for his idea of the “African musical safari”. Just like on a safari trip, when one travels to see different animals in their natural habitats, Morri takes his listeners on a journey through different kinds of music using his own compositions and the many folk songs he has learned on his travels. His unique cross-cultural style, which he calls “mashariki muziki”, combines influences from all over Africa and the world, including Zimbabwean chimurenga, South African mbaqanga and township jive, as well as blues, reggae and even Latin American music. He sings songs in a variety of Southern African languages including Maasai, Kiswahili, isiZulu, isiXhosa, English, Afrikaans, Sesotho, Nyanja, and Shona.
Tsoseletso Enlightenment with Mosoeu Ketlele
Mosoeu has travelled all over South Africa learning to play and make different traditional instruments. Hailing from Lesotho, learning from Madosini in the Eastern Cape and the grandmothers of eSwatini, Mosoeu Ketlele is a multi-instrumentalist with one foot in the soil and the other in community development. In this episode Mosoeu explores 4 ancient musical instruments including serotorotoro, mbira, uhadi, ixharra, instrument making, voice and story-telling.
If you can talk, you can sing, and if you can walk, you can dance. Ancient Proverb
Mosoeu plays a wide variety of African indigenous instruments. His journey to discover the traditional instruments of Southern Africa has taken him all over South Africa and the company of many respected elders, including Madala Kunene, Dizu Plaaitjies and Madosini, a uhadi recording star.
Marabi Melodies - Moss Mogale
Moss Mogale hails from a musical family steeped in the tradition and culture of the musical North. At the age of 78 Bra Moss is together with his younger brother Jesse Mogale and their CAFCA (Committed Artists for Cultural Advancement) Big Band long running music education project from fMamelodi. CAFCA is a unique intergenerational community project preserves a living archive of two great jazz stories of the North - Marabi and Malombo. Moss Mogale is Sepedi speaking. His ancestral home is the Bolobedu, which is a part of the the country known as gaModjadji. Moss Mogale’s musical origin is marabi music, the 1-4-5 pattern of Marabastad in the 1950s.
For improvisation it requires you to be conscious about the movement and the progressions. Moss Mogale
Moss Mogale didn’t have any obstacles to learning. From making his own guitar to joining bands and teaching his brothers to play, Moss always made it his primary task to learn how to handle his instrument and play like the musicians and people he admired.
Music Saved My Life - Gill Gap
Guillaume Rossouw aka Gill Gap is a musical rebel. Music is a clear path of forever learning and like food, music and the arts relate to every culture on our beautiful mother earth. An unlikely hero, on the run from apartheid for 22 years, unlearn with Guill the godfather of punk and now the founder of provolution. In this episode we so we can find a steady footing in musical truth from which to build from.
We all need to get together and appreciate and respect each other. And that is what provolution is.
Guill Gap
Music is a connecting force. But there are also many other art forms that offer that sense of connection. Even sport does it. It could be food and cooking. Music involves history, cultures, environment and society. And so does food. So, if you want to become a really good chef or a good musician, it’s the same process.
When there is a Will there is a way - Retsi Pule
A self - branded professional, Retsi Michael Pule has perpetuated a longevity that infuses and inculcates in the minds of the youth a different approach to singing jazz music. His jazz mission for basic singing skills has put him at the forefront of musical sharing for generations. “Music is as wide as the universe!” Now at 85, Retsi’s positive attitude embraces a new jazz mission. Filmed over the course of three years at Gompo and Biko Centres, this documentary features composer pianist Chester Summerton and the recording of Retsi’s latest album Look into Your Future by the International Library of African Music.
“Music is as wide as the universe!” Retsi Pule
The integration of traditional Xhosa music of the Eastern Cape, to the churches, choirs and inherent improvisation of jazz has a positive effect on umngqungqo. The sound of Eastern Cape Jazz. At 85, Retsi Pule is still on a jazz mission to restore the jazz bridges between eras and styles of the Eastern Cape and ignite the future generations with the love of jazz.
