Blue Notes “For Mongezi” (Ogun 2008, reissued in 2022)

Mongezi Feza was one of the best trumpet player to come out of South Africa. Born in Queenstown in 1945, he started studying his instrument at the age of 8. In 1962 he joined pianist Chris McGregor, altoist Dudu Pukwana, bassist Johnny Dyani and drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo in the Blue Notes. Their first concerts, as testified by my latest review, were an hommage to the flamboyancy of Charlie Parker and bebop and the hipness of Thelonious Monk, to whom many themes of their original fist compositions are paying openly hommage.

The Blue Notes played in different clubs and venues, universities comprised, even if with great difficulties and always clandestinely, being a racially mixed band. After 1964 and their appearance at the Antibes Festival, they started to reside first in Europe and then in the UK, where they had a huge influence both on the scene of improvised music and of rock music. After playing together in a large ensemble called The Brotherhood of Breath, Feza eventually died on December 14, 1975.

This album, For Mongezi, originally issued only in 2008 and now reissued this year, comprises the music originally played at Mongezi’s memorial service. The original music, here in this reissue completely restored, was longer than 2 hours. It is useless to describe point by point what this music sounds like. It is obviously vital, forceful, dense, intense, of impact. Differently from the last record reviewed, this album is not devoted to bebop or post bop music. It is, indeed, a session of music that is keen on free improvisation and roots music, as Coltrane’s Kulu Sé Mama, if we want to find out a far away relative.

On many occasions we can hear Dyani great work on bass, pinched and arcoed, accompanied by drums and small percussions, McGregor ability to play atonally, influences coming from the US more than from UK anyway (The Blue Notes improvisations are never “non idiomatic”) and also from South African folklore, mixed with Pukwana and Moholo-Moholo invocations. Pukwana style on alto seems to have been developed from the original Charlie Parker influence to that of the late great Jimmy Lyons, with that oblique melancholy and bitterness who abruptly develop itself into a cascade of notes without being a clone.

But this record is important, as it is the memorial service for John Coltarne where Albert Ayler played captured in the monumental box set Holy Ghost, because we can feel how much different for African-American culture a departure is from European culture. It is not a matter of believing in the spirits or in a different life, or maybe is, but mostly is a difference related to agency. I remember you, so I’m here playing for you. I’m not only feeling emotions, but I’m sharing those emotions with the world, so maybe, I argue as a critic and as a listener, you are still alive with us throughout our playing, as a source of  inspiration.

Music to be listened to carefully, music filled with love and compassion, music that gives you at once that feeling of intensity and those nuances of depth into the souls of the players involved. If, as someone said to me, the Live in South Africa from 1964 showed us some musicians in love with jazz and willing to recreate that music but not completely mature, this For Mongezi instead leavea us listening the music of four complete and original musicians.

One can hear how important this music was for European improvisers, giving them that feeling of being rooted somewhere even if maybe only technically. Possibly Evan Parker, Alan Skidmore and Mike Osborne were compelled to develop their style incorporating that ritualistic element you can hear through this record. I wonder, as an example, if the binaural sound of Parker, that is his ‘playing through the void’ as he asserted during one concert I attended in London, was influenced somehow by Pukwana and friends’ way of creating music.

Obviously every music need an element of grounding, every form of art. The Blue Notes developed an intense link with ancestor’s rituals, stripped from their original believing – or maybe not? – but dedited to create a sound and a meaning that is modern and ancient at the same time. After all, music is still a ritual nowadays. For many people is a way to meet their idols and the community of listeners to have some fun, for others is a way to beign recognized by and recognize a community, for others again is a way to develop human skills as compassion and brotherhood, but always the spirit of the music is trying to uplift people outside of the everyday problems giving you the opportunity to enter into another dimension so that you can take it and bring it into the realm of reality. To make it better.