"Barney Rachabane plays with the beautiful sound of South Africa. He's one of the finest saxophonists I've ever worked with." - Paul Simon
Barney Rachabane cut his musical teeth in the mid-1950s as a kid weaning small change from discerning commuters on the streets of Alexandra, a black township on the northern fringe of Johannesburg in segregated South Africa. He was immersed in the pennywhistle music of day, a street performance culture that showcased dexterous experts of the portable and affordable six-hole open flute. The sound was new, young, black and urban and ultimately a prototype of South African jazz.
Born in 1946, Barney was the first of four children to a bus-driving father and a mother who ran the home and brought another boy and two girls into the picture. It didn’t take long for Barney’s self-taught path in music to manifest. Shy of double-digits, he was already finding it easy to copy songs by ear from the radio and his ambition quickly grew. His pennywhistle skills earned him a place in a band with formal live performances, which opened the door to music as a profession from a very early age. Barney met saxophonist Zacks Nkosi in the process and was steered into his first studio recording as an 11-year-old pennywhistle prodigy.
“Zacks was my main man really,” remembers Barney. “I was always watching him and he even let me play pennywhistle on the side at some of his gigs. He was my mentor and the best saxophonist I had ever heard.” Zacks Nkosi and the likes of Ntemi Piliso (who later founded the African Jazz Pioneers) were part of the local Alexandra jazz scene that kicked off Barney’s musical education but his appetite for jazz reached far and wide. “I went to the bioscope and heard guys like Benny Goodman. I listened to a lot of records in the townships as well as our live performers. After that, I started listening to guys like Charlie Parker.” While the pennywhistle got him started, Barney soon set his sights on the saxophone.
In the early 1960s, Barney Rachabane fell in with the movers and shakers of the South African jazz scene at an arts centre called Dorkay House in downtown Johannesburg. “Dudu Pukwana, Mackay Davashe, Kippie Moeketsi and Gideon Nxumalo, this was the scene in South Africa at the time and they had a lot of influence. That’s when I started to see that my life was going to be about getting together with these guys. I loved the music they were doing and it was very strong. I started spending all my time following them.”
Dorkay House was a former clothing factory that had been acquired by the Union of South African Artists in the late-50s and housed the African Music and Drama Association (AMDA). The space provided support for black artists in the form of workshops, training, bookings, rehearsal rooms and music examinations and became “the Mecca of South African jazz,” as Barney puts it. “Every morning I used to go there. I used to live there. That was my home.” It was here that Barney forged a friendship with trumpeter Dennis Mpale and both rubbed elbows with South Africa’s jazz luminaries of the era on Chris McGregor and the Castle Lager Big Band’s Jazz: The African Sound in 1963. Barney was just 17.
McGregor’s milestone release saw jazz in South Africa elevating its growing claim to a distinctly African voice. Zacks Nkosi’s Our Kind of Jazz followed in 1964 with an illustrated cover depicting Barney’s mentor playing saxophone in Swazi tribal dress. Nkosi, who had been exposed to the tenets of brass band music at mission school, was part of a generation that drew jazz more deeply into alignment with African sensibilities and traditions. Barney and Dennis were part of a wave of younger musicians who were watching this happen during their formative years and taking notes.
Despite a growing urban black middle class with an interest in jazz and the resources to attend concerts coupled with a small but dedicated following among whites, South Africa’s jazz scene in the 1960s provided limited opportunities. Moreover, the apartheid system restricted access to audiences across racial lines and stifled opportunities for professional growth. Over the course of the decade, many of South Africa’s brightest new jazz hopefuls chose careers in exile. Not so for Barney and Dennis, who would go on make their mark on the local recorded legacy of South African jazz in the 1970s.
The 1960s saw the broad expansion of home listening culture on vinyl as well as a global explosion of popular music recordings. By the 1970s, major labels presided over South Africa’s pop-driven record sales landscape. A few independents like As-Shams/The Sun documented South Africa’s jazz scene at home but most jazz recordings didn’t pay off (with the exception of notable outliers like Dollar Brand’s Mannenberg in 1974). “People loved the music on the stage when we played,” says Barney, “But we couldn’t sell records and make money.” Jazz recordings thus faced the challenge of tuning in to modern sensibilities without turning off the purists. “We had to think of ways of making music simpler for the ear.”
1975 saw two distinct releases by Barney in a frontman position. His solo recording debut was entitled Special Ma-Ma and appeared on the Soul Soul imprint. It was attributed to Barney Rachabane & The Sound Proofs under the direction of strong-arm producer David Thekwane. The recording follows a formula that Thekwane made popular with township supergroup the Movers. While his jazz prowess is clearly on show, Barney is backed by tight arrangements from a rhythm section of jive stalwarts. “We tried not to be too jazzy with the record companies,” explains Barney. With the visage of an attractive young woman on the cover, the album wore its commercial ambitions on its sleeve.
Barney’s second 1975 offering sees him sharing band leadership with former Dorkay House compatriot Dennis Mpale in a sextet called Roots and the results are completely different. While the album’s brief notes announce their sound as a “rock-jazz” amalgam, the description points more to the album’s steady rhythms and crossover ambitions rather than any rock grit. Released on Highway Soul and produced by guitarist Almon Memela, Rachabane (alto), Mpale (trumpet) and Duke Makasi (tenor) are accompanied by Sipho Gumede on bass, Jabu Nkosi on organ and Peter Morake on drums. The self-titled album owed its sound to the unique combination of musicians featured. “We were just doing original music by a group of individual musicians. We just put out what we had. Not just one direction. As you can hear, the music is quite diverse.”
The young rhythm section didn’t have the same pure jazz background as the brass players but they did have the chops and brought the sound of the 1970s. Jabu was the son of Barney’s mentor Zacks Nkosi and performed in a trio with Peter Morake on the township soul circuit while Sipho was a budding composer and sought after session player who channelled unique Zulu stylings. “It’s all about originality, our roots and origins, where we come from,” says Barney. This is exemplified by the album’s standout track “Emakhaya,” a title that means “back home” and a motif at the heart of some of the most singular expressions of South African jazz. This recurring musical theme channels a nostalgia and longing for one’s homeland and reflects the modern black South African experience of migrating to white cities from rural areas in search of work.
Despite commercial ambitions, the Roots ensemble was short-lived but did manage a second recorded offering called Deeper Roots before disbanding. Dennis Mpale went on to record a solo album entitled Our Boys Are Doing It in 1977, a cheeky reply to South African jazz exile Hugh Masekela who enjoyed international mainstream success on Casablanca Records with The Boy’s Doin’ It in 1975. Barney’s second solo recording Sweet Matara was released in 1976 but music remained financially perilous in the niche jazz marketplace in South Africa until a lucky break in the 1980s opened a door to the international stage.
Barney Rachabane’s life was transformed by Paul Simon’s collaborative South African album Graceland in 1986 with his appearance on the track “Gumboots.” Despite attracting the ire of the cultural boycott movement, Simon shattered the glass ceiling for many world class South African musicians. “Graceland opened my eyes and set a tone of hope in my life,” reflects Barney. In the 1980s and 1990s, he toured internationally with Paul Simon on four occasions and even shared the stage at Simon’s epic Concert in the Park in August 1991. Paul Simon welcomed news that the Roots album was being reissued and remarked that “Barney Rachabane is one of the most soulful saxophone players in the world.”
Barney released a pair of solo albums on Jive Afrika label in the late-1980s. He participated in Paul Simon’s Graceland Reunion tour in 2012 and appears on the 25th anniversary documentary Under African Skies. Barney toured most recently with fellow South African jazz stalwart Tete Mbambisa & His SA-UK Big Sound in 2017. He lives a humble married life at his home in Soweto surrounded by affectionate grown-up children who have inherited his passion and talent for music. Having dedicated his life to music, he is revered as one of the last living repositories of the story of South African jazz.
* Notes from an interview with Barney Rachabane at his home in Soweto in August 2017. Originally published in November 2020.