Originally, the Cape Town Jazz Society, presented gigs at a venue in Salt River but at some point in probably 1987, the gigs moved to a Sunday evening slot at The Base in Shortmarket Street in die Cape Town CBD.
I attended almost all of the gigs, not because I was a huge jazz afficionado but because there wasn’t much else happening on a Sunday night in Apartheid-era South Africa in the late ‘80s. Also, the type of jazz presented at The Base was, I supposed, the more commercial kind with a broad appeal beyond purists.
The acts I recall, were Basil Coetzee’s Sabenza group, Robbie Jansen, The Genuines and Wired to the Floor. There might’ve been others but these seemed to be booked most often.
Wired to the Floor was a fusion four-piece band, led by saxophonist and vocalist Gavin Minter and the style was hard, funk-rock-jazz, some instrumental, some with vocals. “Art and the Dollar” was the big tune. The musicians were technically highly proficient but the music never resonated with me, as it was simply high energy, well-arranged songs with no soul and little emotional appeal.
A unique aspect of their sound was that the guitar player played synthesises keyboards through his guitar, or controlled the keyboards through the guitar, to widen and deepen the sonic pallet.
The Genuines were, like Wired to the Floor, a four-piece band, with no keyboard sounds though bass player ‘Mac’ McKenzie’s father contributed a little banjo plucking to their so-called “ghoema” Cape Flats sound. Though the music was also a muscular, dextrous, funked up, jazz rock fusion, they also paid homage to their Cape Town music roots. The Genuines were a regular attraction at Indaba (at the intersection of Wale and Buitengracht Streets), the Base’s competition but at the Indaba The Genuines played Friday and Saturday night gigs, the big club nights, and could well have been the hardest working band in Cape Town, given at how many venues, and how often, I saw them, to the extent that I sometimes avoided venues when I knew The Genuine headlined the evening.
The band released two albums on the Shifty Records label.
Keyboardist Hilton Schilder came from, as the saying goes, jazz royalty in that his father, Tony, was a well-regarded jazz pianist and perhaps the other musicians had jazz backgrounds too but their music hardly sounded like traditional jazz. Drummer Ian Herman went on to play with guitarist Steve Newman in Tananas before heading off for an “international career.`’
Basil “Manenberg” Coetzee’s Sabenza and Robbie Jansen (the two saxophonists once played together on recording projects and had a short-lived joint group) were the only true jazz acts at The Base. Both came up in the port bop scene and played with Abdullah Ebrahim (Dollar Brand), amongst others and in respect to his association with Ebrahim, Coetzee played on Ebrahim’s monster hit track of the same name, contributing an improvised, first take saxophone solo. An extended, rousing version of “Manenberg” was Coetzee’s regular show closer.
Jansen played a similar style of music and also sang. My best memories of him is playing with Coetzee, though, as Jansen wasn’t as much of a regular on the Jazz Club stage as Coetzee was.
There might’ve been other jazz acts but I only recall the few that had the most gigs. Perhaps these were the only jobbing jazz musicians in Cape Town but it did seem like a kind of close shop. The only act I truly cared for was Basil Coetzee’s group. The jazz/funk/rock fusions of the Genuines and Wired to the Floor weren’t as interesting and The Genuines was such a fixture on the live scene in Cape Town that their set became somewhat tedious from over-familiarity. As I’ve said, I attended the Jazz Club shows mostly for a want of something better to do on a Sunday night; it wasn’t particularly compelling.
I’ve no idea anymore when or why the Cape Town Jazz Club Evenings at The Base came to an end. It could been the natural result of The Base itself closing down, probably at the end of 1988, more or less at the same time as Indaba Project, or the sessions could’ve ended because of lack of interest and commercial challenges. The gigs were well attended but perhaps not as well as the normal club nights at The Base on Friday and Saturday nights. Beginning in late 1988 there was a general re-set of club venues in Cape Town anyway. The Café Royal Hotel, in Church Street, had started putting on gigs early on Friday nights, aimed to end before punters headed off to the late night clubs but from early 1989 it replaced Indaba Project as premier live venue in die CBD and roughly a year later The Smokehouse Blues Club set out its stall on Saturday nights on the premises of what used to be the Master Mariners’ Club on the corner of Shortmarket and Loop Streets. By this time The Base and Indaba Project were merely fond memories.
If the Cape Town Jazz Club relocated and carried on, I didn’t know or care, really. It’d been a Sunday night distraction for a while but soon lost its lustre, for me, and became a kind of habit rather than a must-go event. By and By other jazz venues operated in the CBD, like Manenberg’s on upper Adderly Street (and which eventually moved to the V & A Waterfront) and, much later, the Green Dolphin restaurant in the V & A Waterfront. I never went to Manenberg’s and hung out at the Green Dolphin maybe twice in the late ‘90s, quickly bored by the Tony Schilder Trio’s tepid background jazz.
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