Jazz aplenty

As mentioned in several previous posts, jazz played a pivotal role in bringing different races together in the late 1980s. The Rev Patrick Pasha, an activist clergyman in the Port Elizabeth townships, was among those who performed alongside white and "coloured" musicians at Razzamatazz in Central and the Walmer Gardens Hotel, among other venues. I did a spate of drawings during a couple of those informal jazz sessions.

An elderly pianist whose name eludes me.

The Rev Patrick Pasha blowing up a storm.

Keyboard player Errol Cuddemby.

A guitarist whose name, too, I did not ascertain.

Yet another guitarist.

This oldish guy was a real character. He played jazz on an acoustic guitar, while seated. Note the cymbals behind him.

A different, smooth paper, gives a different line quality.

Sax man.

This guy, if I recall correctly, was playing percussion instruments.

Cuddemby at the keyboards.

Another of the white guys who slotted in effortlessly alongside their black fellow musos.

I recall this drummer as having the surname Yoko, or suchlike.

Sax improvisations often brought ecstatic applause.

Another guitarist.

This was done on a section of old Christmas card.

Where would we be without the electric guitar?

A full-blown sax blast.

I mentioned on an earlier posting that there was a guy of Dutch descent who did lead vocals. This is him.

Another sax blast.

That same seated acoustic guitarist.

This young woman vocalist wowed the patrons.

Yet another of the talented sax sect.

The brown blob in the foreground is, I suspect, the back of a head.

I rather like the repeated profile of this oke.

I may have mixed this clarinetist up from an earlier outing, posted earlier, at which a brass band played in St George's Park.

Spectator or player - and in St George's or a jazz venue?

Sax player - but was it at the jazz club?

This drawing seems to stem from another time.

The trumpet's shape embodies a certain dynamism.

And what of the audience? These were people of all races - a smattering of whites at Razzamatazz among a largely "coloured" audience, and mainly whites at Walmer Gardens. I sketched a host of characters.

This I recall as being a former Herald photographer, Gert Coetzee.

Lapping up the sounds.

This guy I vaguely recall as running the Razzamatazz show.

An interesting outfit for a jazz show.

She was into the blues.

He wasn't yellow.

In those days smoking in public places was still very much the done thing.

Some found things nail-bitingly tense.

This shaggy-haired oke may well have been a young reporter on the Evening Post for a while.

Profile.

Leonine profile.

Near-silhouetted profile.

Take five.