SATHIMA BEA BENJAMIN ‘AFRICAN SONGBIRD’
Release date: 1 June 2013
Gatefold 180g Vinyl Edition (MM103), Compact Disc (MM103CD) and Download (MM103DD)
Released by Matsuli Music, Distributed by Honest Jon’s
Sathima Bea Benjamin’s Spiritual Jazz Masterpiece Reissued
African Songbird is a tour-de-force, and arguably the most dramatic and powerful release on Rashid
Vally’s As-shams label. The opener, ‘Africa’, is the album’s fulcrum, a statement of breath-taking
musical, personal and political complexity. It is a song of exile, of loss, and of return: a song that is both
personal and universal, speaking for a people made homeless in their own land, speaking to those
whose ambivalent embrace of exile ached for a homecoming. It speaks too of hope and resolution.
Africa is a personally powerful declaration from a remarkable African woman: a song of deferred self
and dislocated space finally resolved in an emotional homecoming. It is a song of celebration and
mourning – a heartfelt paean to her home that is shot through with the raw sorrow of lament.
Sathima’s voice, wholly unique in jazz singing, gradually sheds its musical supports as the programme
develops. From the thickly-layered tumult of Africa, through the characteristic Cape Town swing that
informs Music, the instrumentation is quietly reduced, then finally dispensed with. The title track is
performed acapella, but for the natural sounds of the sea coast, the gulls and surf of the Cape itself.
After many years of silence, two deferred albums, and over a decade of rootless exile from a home that
had been made inhospitable by the inhumanity of apartheid, Sathima’s voice is finally heard, alone with
her song, naturally, like a bird.
Sathima’s career has been challenged throughout by a struggle to be heard. Her repertoire was
resolutely uncommercial. She never played on her African roots to gain acceptance internationally, and
her complete commitment to classic jazz idioms never wavered: as an African artist, this made it difficult
for audiences, critics and record companies to understand the nature of her talent. The unique genius
and global success of her husband Abdullah Ibrahim (previously known as Dollar Brand) cast its own
shadow, and as the mother of two children, music could not always be her first priority. These
challenges were exacerbated by the pressures of political exile, and for Sathima, due recognition was
late to arrive.
