The Jazz Epistles

Short-lived Southern African jazz group that advanced from the Jazz In Africa program. A landmark 1959 documenting session arranged by John Mehagan (a going to US pianist) that highlighted local music artists Hugh Masekela, Jonas Gwangwa and Kippie Moeketsi. When Mehagan came back to the united states the remaining associates recruited pianist Money Brand and called themselves the Jazz Epistles. They documented one well-received record, provided an acclaimed functionality at the Silver Castle Country wide Jazz Festival and split (Brand shifting to Switzerland, Masekela and Gwangwa to the united states). Their record was removed after an extremely limited initial discharge and became very much popular by supporters of South African jazz. The compilation Jazz In Africa Quantity One released by UK-based South African music experts Kaz Information in 1992 (and eventually reissued by Camden/BMG six years afterwards), featured monitors in the Jazz Epistles record plus various other Epistles related materials. It showed several musicians who had been obviously deeply in love with the American contemporary jazz of performers such as for example Thelonious Monk, Charlie ‘Parrot’ Parker and John Coltrane, but also starting to forge a far more distinctively South African audio that they would develop as specific artists within the coming decades.