The musician and activist Julian Bahula, who has died aged 85, was the primary participant to introduce indigenous African drums to South African jazz, an innovation that was essential to the music of the Black Consciousness Motion within the Nineteen Seventies.
In political exile within the UK from 1973, he was a tireless activist for the Anti-Apartheid Motion and the African Nationwide Congress, gigging at rallies and advantages together with his group Jabula. In 1983, working with Mike Terry of the AAM, Bahula organised the primary large-scale live performance to publicise the destiny of Nelson Mandela and different political prisoners of apartheid.
Timed to have fun Mandela’s sixty fifth birthday and funded by the Arts Council, Hackney council, the Musicians’ Union and the GLC, the Competition of African Sounds occurred at Alexandra Palace in north London on 17 July, and featured performances from Hugh Masekela, Osibisa and Bahula’s group Jazz Afrika, amongst others.
The live performance was the primary occasion to deliver Mandela’s imprisonment to wider public consciousness, and it was right here that Jerry Dammers heard Jazz Afrika play their music Mandela, inspiring him to put in writing the Specials’ protest music with its chorus “Free Nelson Mandela”, which turned a global hit the next 12 months.
Bahula was born in Eersterust, a township east of Pretoria the place black South Africans may then personal the freehold on property. Following the Group Areas Act, underneath which black residents had their properties expropriated, within the late Nineteen Fifties Bahula’s household had been forcibly relocated to the township of Mamelodi.
There, Bahula started to play entice drums in a jazz group referred to as the Crotchets, however then shaped a trio, the Malombo Jazzmen, with the guitarist Philip Tabane and the flautist Abbey Cindi. At first he continued to make use of a western drum package, however Tabane’s music required a special sound, so he changed his package with Pedi malopo drums, historically utilized in therapeutic rituals.
In 1964 they entered the second Fort Lager Jazz competition in Johannesburg. The looks of the Malombo Jazzmen, with their indigenous African rhythms and devices, triggered an enormous stir on the time of Hendrik Verwoerd’s “grand apartheid”. The Malombos shared first prize with one other drummer, Early Mabuza, and Bahula featured on the quilt of the following album, Fort Lager Jazz Competition 1964. It was a bestseller, although the band by no means noticed a penny in royalties.
Quickly afterwards, Tabane left to discovered his personal group; Bahula and Cindi enlisted the guitarist Lucas “Fortunate” Ranku, and continued because the Malombo Jazz Makers. They carried out broadly and recorded three acclaimed albums for South Africa’s premier file label, Gallo (as soon as once more, they noticed no royalties).
Managed by the ANC activist and photographer Peter Magubane, the group additionally started to work within the underground anti-apartheid battle; as early as 1966 Bahula was smuggling paperwork to exiled ANC cadres in Botswana inside his drums. Within the early 70s they struck up a detailed relationship with Steve Biko and different main figures within the South African College students’ Organisation, accompanying Biko and Strini Moodley’s radical Theatre Council of Natal on a clandestine theatre and poetry tour entitled Into the Coronary heart of Negritude.
Additionally they broke apartheid legal guidelines by performing secretly with the white psychedelic rock group Freedom’s Youngsters in segregated venues (the set could be carried out in darkness, with the Malombos’ fingers and faces painted with fluorescent paint), and at David Marks’s Free Peoples live shows, which featured racially blended payments and audiences. In consequence, the police frequently pursued them and the particular department raided their gigs and houses.
Bahula fled to London in 1973, with Ranku intently following him, and based the band Jabula, that includes Ranku on guitar. The group included members of the British-Caribbean group Cymande and made two albums with Caroline information, Jabula (1975), and Thunder Into Our Hearts (1976), each that includes saxophonist Dudu Pukwana. Bahula then began his personal label and promotions firm, Tsafrika.
Together with his spouse Liza (nee Breen), whom he had met at Ronnie Scott’s jazz membership, and in 1978 married, he promoted a daily African music evening from the mid-70s on the 100 Membership on Oxford Avenue, reserving artists from all around the continent together with Masekela, Manu Dibango, Fela Kuti and Miriam Makeba. He continued to boost cash and unfold consciousness of the anti-apartheid battle with Jabula, typically enjoying with out pay at speeches, events, fundraising occasions and protests.
Run on a shoestring, Tsafrika had largely been supported by grants from the GLC; when that physique was abolished by Margaret Thatcher’s authorities in 1987, it turned unimaginable to maintain. The 100 Membership classes dried up, and Jabula and Jazz Afrika disbanded. Bahula remained concerned with the ANC and AAM and continued to play drums, together with a monitor on Stevie Marvel’s 1987 album Characters.
When apartheid fell and Bahula was lastly in a position to return to South Africa, he efficiently sued his former file labels for misplaced royalties on behalf of the Malombos, regaining management of the group’s publishing rights. A severe automotive accident in South Africa within the mid-90s left him with extreme head accidents, and after an extended convalescence he and Liza moved out of London to the Wiltshire city of Westbury.
In 2012 he was awarded the gold class of the Order of Ikhamanga, South Africa’s highest honour for creative and cultural work. After Liza’s loss of life in 2016, Bahula moved again to London, and in 2018 he married Pinky Miles. After changing into critically unwell earlier this 12 months, he returned to South Africa.
His daughter, Nancy, from a earlier relationship, predeceased him. He’s survived by Pinky, and by three grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.
