African Sounds from the Past: ‘Fats, Duke & The Monk’ by Abdullah Ibrahim (1973)

South African-born jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim (born Adolph Johannes Brand, until his conversion to Islam) recorded his solo set, Fats, Duke & The Monk, on 18 February 1973, originally a solo piano recital in front of an intimate audience. He played three medley improvisations in this album: the previously unreleased ‘Salaam Peace’, along with ‘African Portraits’ (my personal favourite, due to the fact that Earl Sweatshirt sampled this track in his EP, Solace) from the Sackville album, and ‘Fats, Duke & The Monk’.

His hometown of Kensington (formerly Windermere), in Cape Town, South Africa, was a culturally mixed community, destroyed between 1958 – 1963 for the development of ‘model townships’, a reminder of apartheid’s social engineering, which ordered residents to live within their enforced places in society and abandon multiculturalism. Apartheid’s system was constructed around the belief that so-called ‘pure’ racial and ethnic identities were an important basis in controlling South Africa, leading legislatures to focus on destroying mixed race communities, classifying areas by race to reduce both freedom and diversity.

Ibrahim wanted to create music out of personal expression rather than for financial reasons

Abdullah Ibrahim’s community was one of the many destroyed, the destruction of Kensington serving as a social landscape, helping us to understand the energy and emotions of the resilient men and women affected. They were displaced to Nyanga, Langa, and Gugulethu. Ibrahim was based in District Six, Cape Town, a hub of black culture in South Africa.

Ibrahim’s music career gained momentum in Sophiatown, Johannesburg. It was here that he formed the Jazz Epistles with several other South African jazz musicians. The Jazz Epistles quickly became one of the most influential jazz bands in South Africa, but Ibrahim wanted to create music out of personal expression rather than for financial reasons.

The Jazz Epistles were engaged in cultural guerilla warfare against the laws and values of apartheid South Africa, with the police shutting down racially integrated nightclubs and prohibited black artists performing to white audiences. This led Ibrahim, along with many other influential jazz artists, to flee South Africa.

The album, overall, is Ibrahim’s cry for resistance against this regime. He moved to Zurich in 1962, following the Sharpeville Massacre, before travelling to New York, with the Black Power and civil right movements gaining traction. He later moved to Europe, living there for decades, touring extensively and performing with musicians like Max Roach and Randy Weston.

Fats, Duke & The Monk is best described as 53 minutes of cerebral ambience

During this time, he also converted to Islam and changed his name from Adolph Brand to Abdullah Ibrahim. He remained in exile until the early 1990s, meaning his music was created while observing the state of South Africa, jazz becoming a symbol of resistance. The oppression of jazz musicians was very similar to how the apartheid government oppressed Nelson Mandela and other members of the African National Congress – Ibrahim wanted to speak out.

Fats, Duke & The Monk is best described as 53 minutes of cerebral ambience, its intricacy not made for mass appeal, but more of a cult following, especially the 23-minute track ‘African Portraits’. By the time of its release, Ibrahim had found his sound – a sophisticated blend of jazz and spiritualism, heavily influenced by his South African heritage, bridging a range of feelings and emotions. His melancholic musical style, created by employing a soft, downtempo approach, brings feelings of homesickness, perhaps metaphorical for how so many individuals were made to feel as though they had no homes during the unrest. Furthermore, the slow, deep piano generates feelings of introspection, possibly reflecting his reflections on the state of South African social politics.

He uses space (gaps within the songs) to allow the listeners to connect with the deep personal trauma and collective experience of South Africa in distress. His playing style features a quiet, ruminating feel, concerning space and ambience. This meditative approach allows the listener to feel the depth of emotion and weight of the history of South Africa under apartheid. ‘African Portraits’ comes from its deep connection to the pain of the apartheid era of South Africa, riveted in systemic racism, the trauma of exile, and feelings of loss. The song is a lyric-less expression of resistance to the regime and its destruction of Black South African communities.

It is a beautiful, sad piece of music that I highly recommend if you are interested in South African history and music

The blend of different sounds within each song, never conforming to a particular style (blending jazz and spiritualism, elements of East Asian Buddhist philosophies, and Western style jazz), represents his desire to blend cultures and identities to form his own, a staunchly anti-apartheid ideology, which enforced a mono-racial and mono-ethnic culture.

It is a beautiful, sad piece of music that I highly recommend if you are interested in South African history and music. Another EP I recommend is Earl Sweatshirt’s 10-minute unreleased project, Solace, South African American experimental hip-hop from the artist who emerged from hip-hop group Odd Future. He sampled a loop of ‘African Portraits’ for the lead-up to the second part of the song, tracing back to his connection to his South African roots.