November 30 marked what would have been Blue Note member Johnny Mbizo Dyanis’ 76th birthday (some say 78th) here, I take a journey through conversation with the living and departed jazz musicians and students on impression of the Afrofuturistic bass master.
Brass, class, steel and sorrow: Jonas Gwangwa cut close to the bone
29 Jan 2021
Trombonist Jonas Gwangwa has a superb back catalogue, despite the fact that not all of his recordings have been reissued. (Siphiwe Mhlambi)
Joni Mitchell put it best in
Big Yellow Taxi: “Don’t it always seem to go/ That you don’t know what you’ve lost/Till it’s gone.” So it is with the passing of Jonas Mosa Gwangwa. Only now, after a full week of sadness and tributes, does it even start feeling real that there will be no more new songs from the mind, voice and trombone that gave us