Abdullah Ibrahim (born 1934, Cape Town,
South Africa), formerly known as Adolph Johannes Brand, and as
Dollar Brand (from a popular brand of matches), 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. He first received piano lessons at the age
of seven, was an avid consumer of jazz records brought by
American sailors, and was playing jazz professionally by 1949.
In 1959 and 1960, he played alongside Kippie Moeketsi with The
Jazz Epistles in Sophiatown before joining the European tour of
the musical King Kong.
In 1962 during a tour of Europe, Duke Ellington heard “The
Dollar Brand Trio” playing in Zürich's “Africana Club”. As a
result, a recording was set up with Reprise Records; “Duke
Ellington presents The Dollar Brand Trio”. 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. Since then he has toured mainly in Europe,
the United States, and in his home country, South Africa.
Performances are mainly in concerts and clubs, mostly as a band,
but sometimes playing solo piano. He mainly plays piano but also
plays flute, and saxophone; he mainly performs his own
compositions, although he sometimes performs pieces composed by
others.
He briefly returned to South Africa in the mid-1970s after his
conversion to Islam (and the resultant change of name from
Dollar Brand to Abdullah Ibrahim); however, he soon returned to
New York in 1976, as he found the political conditions too
oppressive. While in South Africa, however, he made a series of
recordings with noted Cape Town jazz players (including Basil
Coetzee and Robbie Jansen). This included Coetzee's masterpiece,
"Mannenberg", acknowledged by most as one of South Africa's
greatest musical compositions; the recording soon became an
unofficial soundtrack to the anti-apartheid resistance.
Abdullah Ibrahim has written the soundtracks for a number of
films, including the award winning Chocolat and, more recently,
No Fear, No Die. Since the end of apartheid, he now lives in
South Africa and divides his time between his global concert
circuit, New York, and South Africa.
Abdullah Ibrahim is a towering figure in South African music, an
artist who brings together all its traditions with a deeply felt
understanding of American jazz, from the orchestral richness of
Duke Ellington's compositions for big band to the groundbreaking
innovations of Ornette Coleman and the 1960s avant-garde.
Ibrahim has worked as a solo performer, typically in mesmerising
unbroken concerts that echo the unstoppable impetus of the old
marabi performers. He also performs regularly with trios and
quartets and larger orchestral units. Since his triumphant
return to South Africa in the early 1990s, he has been feted
with symphony orchestra performances, one of which was in honour
of Nelson Mandela's installation as President. He has also
founded a school for South African musicians in Cape Town.
With his wife, the jazz singer Sathima Bea Benjamin, he is
father to the New York underground rapper Jean Grae, as well as
to a son, Tsakwe.
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