Jazz maestro launches seventh album

years now, but thankfully, the popular musician gave the Sowetan an interview recently.
Dludlu, who launched his new album, Tonota , at the Marco Polo Lounge in Sandton was lively and in a good mood.
The venue for the meeting was a northern suburbs hotel, where Dludlu reminisced about the good old days when live jazz was very much part of Johannesburg’s music scene.

That was the scenario before he trekked to Cape Town with the aim of teaching at the University of Cape Town, where he graduated with a degree in jazz studies.
“Things have certainly changed in Johannesburg with regard to live jazz venues,” Dludlu said.
“Cape Town, just like the rest of the country. has also been affected but in different ways by the global recession as well as by low CD sales and piracy.

“But when it comes to live venues it is more vibrant than Johannesburg, with with a number of intimate venues hosting jazz bands regularly. It is a vibrant culture, and Cape Town has a rich history of jazz with a loyal jazz audience,” Dludlu said.
“I mean, if you look at at it this way, we have only four jazz festivals in the country . . . the Cape Town International Jazz Festival, Macufe in Bloemfontein, Moretele Jazz in the Park in Pretoria and the Joy of Jazz festival in Johannesburg.

“Now all the jazz artists scramble to be part of these jazz festivals, which is impossible, bearing in mind that there are also new jazz artistes coming on to the scene. Besides, people also want to hear new talent.
“The problem, particularly in Johannesburg, is that there is hardly any live jazz venue, as compared with when we had such great places as Kippies.

“It is so sad, and the difficulty these days is that you will see a live jazz venue open only to close a few months later because the landlord has decided to increase the rent.”
Guitar genius Dludlu, who launched his latest album at the Marco Polo Lounge in Sandton last night, said the level of creativity demonstrated by South African musicians had, despite the recession, shown an upward curve.

The artiste launched Tonota, his seventh album, which he describes as the journey of his life.
“This album was inspired by a village near Francistown in Botswana, where I spent a part of my life when I was growing up and trying to find my own voice in the music industry. The quietness of this village has inspired me to create this 15-piece album.

“The album has been influenced partly by the village and partly by the positive things that have since happened to me in life.”
Dludlu said there were a number of reasons why people were not buying music compared with previous times. But a lack of creativity was not one of the contributing factors.

“In fact, musicians have become more creative over the past eight years or so. There are quite a number of reasons, including new technology such as the Internet, through which musicians and producers can now access information about how best to produce good music.

“We have taken advantage of this technology – from producing music to packaging it,” he said.
He pointed out that new technology that allowed music lovers to download specific songs from an album at a much lower price has affected album sales negatively.

“Basically, instead of people buying the whole album with a lot of songs at a certain higher price, people can now just download the song they want off an album and pay say R19,” Dludlu said.
Dludlu has worked with long-time collaborator Mark Goliath on the album. “He is the one who has worked with me on every single album I have done.” – Sowetan.