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 of Cape jazz. Within jazz, his music particularly reflects the influence of Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington. He is known especially for “Mannenberg”, a jazz piece that became a notable anti-apartheid anthem. During the apartheid era in the 1960s, Ibrahim moved to New York City and, apart from a brief return to South Africa in the 1970s, remained in exile until the early 1990s. Over the decades, he has toured the world extensively, appearing at major venues either as a solo artist or playing with other renowned musicians, including Max Roach, Carlos Ward and Randy Weston, as well as collaborating with classical orchestras in Europe. With his wife, the jazz singer Sathima Bea Benjamin, Ibrahim is father to the New York underground rapper Jean Grae, as well as to a son, Tsakwe. Ibrahim was born in Cape Town, South Africa, on 9 October 1934, and was baptized Adolph Johannes Brand. He attended Trafalgar High School in Cape Town’s District Six, and began piano lessons at the age of seven, making his professional debut at 15.[2] He is of mixed-race heritage, making him a Coloured person according to the apartheid system.[3] His mother played piano in a church, the musical style of which would remain an influence on him; in addition, he learned to play several genres of music during his youth in Cape Town, including marabi, mbaqanga, and American jazz. He became well known in jazz circles in Cape Town and Johannesburg. In 1959 and 1960, Ibrahim played with the Jazz Epistles group in Sophiatown, alongside saxophonists Kippie Moeketsi and Mackay Davashe, trumpeter Hugh Masekela, trombonist Jonas Gwangwa (who were all in the orchestra of the musical King Kong that opened in Johannesburg in February 1959),[5][6][7] bassist Johnny Gertze and drummer Makaya Ntshoko; in January 1960, the six musicians went into the Gallo studio and recorded the first full-length jazz LP by Black South African musicians, Jazz Epistle Verse One,[2][8][9] with 500 copies being produced.[10] Although the group avoided explicitly political activity, the apartheid government was suspicious of it and other jazz groups, and targeted them heavily during the increase in state repression following the Sharpeville massacre in March 1960, and eventually, the Jazz Epistles broke up. Ibrahim moved to Europe in 1962. In February 1963, his wife-to-be, Sathima Bea Benjamin (they married in 1965), convinced Duke Ellington, who was in Zürich, Switzerland, on a European tour, to come to hear Ibrahim perform as “The Dollar Brand Trio” in Zurich’s “Africana Club”.[2] After the show, Ellington helped set up a recording session with Reprise Records: Duke Ellington presents The Dollar Brand Trio.[8] A second recording of the trio (also with Ellington and Billy Strayhorn on piano) performing with Sathima as vocalist was recorded, but remained unreleased until 1996 (A Morning in Paris, under Benjamin’s name). The Dollar Brand Trio (with Johnny Gertze on bass and Makaya Ntshoko on drums) subsequently played at many European festivals, as well as on radio and television. Ibrahim and Benjamin moved to New York in 1965[12] and that year he played at the Newport Jazz Festival, followed by a first tour through the US; in 1966 Ibrahim substituted for Duke Ellington on five dates, leading the Duke Ellington Orchestra.[13] In 1967, a Rockefeller Foundation grant enabled him to study at the Juilliard School of Music in New York.[2] While in the US he interacted with many progressive musicians, among them Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Cecil Taylor and Archie Shepp.[2] As the Black Power movement developed in the 1960s and 1970s, it influenced a number of Ibrahim’s friends and collaborators, who began to see their music as a form of cultural nationalism. Ibrahim in turn began to incorporate African elements into his jazz. In 2007, Ibrahim was presented with the South African Music Lifetime Achievement Award, given by the Recording Industry of South Africa, in a ceremony at the Sun City Superbowl. In 2009, for his solo piano album Senzo he received the “Best Male Artist” award at the 15th Annual MTN South African Music Awards. In 2009, the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, conferred on Ibrahim an Honorary Doctorate of Music.[44] Also in 2009, he was awarded South Africa’s national honour the Order of Ikhamanga (Silver), “For his excellent contribution to the arts, putting South Africa on the international map and his fight against racism and apartheid.” In July 2017, Ibrahim was honoured with the German Jazz Trophy. In July 2018, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced Abdullah Ibrahim as one of four recipients of the NEA Jazz Masters Fellowships, to be celebrated in a concert on 15 April 2019 at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. Awarded in recognition of lifetime achievement, the honor is bestowed on individuals who have made significant contributions to the art form, the other 2019 recipients being Bob Dorough, Maria Schneider, and Stanley Crouch.
