{"id":398,"date":"2011-05-11T11:49:31","date_gmt":"2011-05-11T15:49:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/2011\/05\/south_african_jazz_hero_zim_nq\/"},"modified":"2019-09-13T11:54:37","modified_gmt":"2019-09-13T15:54:37","slug":"south_african_jazz_hero_zim_nq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2011\/05\/south_african_jazz_hero_zim_nq.html","title":{"rendered":"South African jazz hero Zim Nqgawana dies, age 52"},"content":{"rendered":"

Neil Tesser has written an informative post about Zim Nqgawana<\/a>, the South African jazz musician who died at age 52 of a stroke May 10. Ngqawana, whose name is pronounced with a glottal “click” between the “N” and first “a,” performed at the 2007 Columbia\/Harlem Festival of Global Jazz,” curated by George E. Lewis of Columbia University’s Center for Jazz Studies, Nqgawana, with his quartet, <\/span>in that concert<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0struck me\u00c2\u00a0as a powerful and original saxophonist and flutist, improvising with a heightened lyricism no doubt inspired by John Coltrane’s late period sound, but standing on its own. (photo by Dragan Tasic).<\/span><\/p>\n


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photo \u00c2\u00a9Dragan Tasic<\/p><\/div>\n

His music that night (and on\u00c2\u00a0Zimology<\/a><\/i>, his one album I’ve heard) had little overt reference to the South Africa of, say, Paul Simon’s Graceland<\/i>; rather, it was stately (at times as deep as that of sombre pianist Abdullah Ibrahim) and dynamic like the best of trumpeter Hugh Masekela — with whom Nqgawana had worked — but with no pop or commercial aspirations. The Mail and Guardian Online headlines Nqgawana as a “genius<\/a>,” which is a tricky term, but I have admired and can recommend his music, and be sorry that he’ll play no more.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span>(PS and full disclosure: The Columbia\/Harlem Fest also hosted the first and so far only convention of international jazz journalists in the U.S.” “Jazz in the Global Imagination,” co-produced by the Jazz Journalists Association<\/a>, of which I’m pres. . .)<\/span><\/div>\n
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