The reason I write this was brought on by a phone call yesterday from Bruce Cooper, a journalist for SAA’s Sawubona magazine, who is writing a piece on one of my favourite artists, Madosini.

I love what I do – and especially in the country that I do it in. That’s pretty important these days; I don’t always get to meet people who are as happy doing what they do for a living, as I am. This country is a great place, regardless of all the sh1t that surrounds us, often trying to push us off our bicycles as we come peddling peacefully along. I am proud to at least be trying to make something positive shine out above all the darkness, and being able to share that along the way.
So I was raving in my usual passionate way to Bruce about how Madosini’s music is such a link to more ancient times, having been passed down from generation to generation, and that when I listen to her CD, or even better her live performance, I am able to feel a real connection to the past. That’s amazing stuff. And it isn’t the same kind of déjà vu that I have when I hear the Dirty Dancing sound track, thinking back to my Standard 8 girlfriend and how cool I tried look with two left feet and two right hands – this is a real inner connection and can make you quite giddy if you allow yourself to float away with these earthy sounds.

Madosini’s music, played by young girls who had it passed on by their mothers and their mother before them, will outlast most of what we are assaulted with now on a day to day basis; the sounds that fill our heads at shopping centres and in the car; while cooking supper and at concerts in smoky halls. Hers is a music that is meant to be played when things are peaceful; when the family settles around the fire, sparks shooting off towards the star studded sky. To put babies to sleep. It has no amplification, or a need for a band of players to keep its beat – it’s more like a story-vehicle with which our mind is driven to its own whim or fancy. It’s soul music.

I get to meet and know, to work with incredible people like Madosini – and there are but a handful of these treasures left. So-called artists, but more like historians, whose life’s purpose is to pass on the sounds of the past.

Yes, the sweaty excitement and sexiness of Rock n’ Roll has its attraction; and give me some funky Jazz on most days to inspire me to experiment and jam; or some Classical music for when I am filled with emotion and want to be touched by an orchestra of hands; but leave my Traditional music for when I want to remember who I am, in relation to a past that goes back far further than my genealogical records.

Its natural rhythms speak to the primitive being inside; the beats building and awakening the raw you, who can just jump up and move with it, freely and without reserve (well, as much as my lilly white ass can!). It’s like dancing with the ancestors, those who came before you, and those whose ears too felt the same pleasure, as we can, at the push of a button today. (That’s if you aren’t near to an artist like Madosini, and of course, if Eskom has come to the party!)

So, today was once again affirmation for me, how happy I am to be able to experience first-hand the joy of music in all its forms, and that my ‘job’, of spreading that same music to people, must be one of the coolest in the world.

Here’s a short video I found called MadoJazz, with Madosini performing as part of a jazz ensemble at the SA Museum’s Whale Well. Combining the old world with the new.