jazz... we've still got it! Vol.1

Award winning South African writer Malebo Sephodi once remarked that “Art speaks a
language that my soul comprehends…when I slip into a dark place and I can’t go on - I hide in
the arms of Jazz for a while - for nourishment, refreshment, and inspiration.” 

It goes almost without saying that music speaks where and, more importantly, when words fail silently. The listener seeking, and hopefully, finding the refuge they so desperately sought from the rhetoric.
A shelter for perhaps but the briefest of time. Jazz, unlike any other genre of music, is one of
the moment. A form that is almost without shape; a manifestation of all that has come before it,
transmuted and ‘passed down’ from actual human tragedy to the various musical influences to
the stylings of its current roster of players. Jazz is the amalgamation of what we have been,
who we are now, and that which we hope to be.

Fortunately, the art form is in the hands, hearts, and souls of artists with reverence for the past
musical endeavors of the jazz giants; the artistic acumen, ability, and vision for today, and the
courage, fortitude, and musicality for tomorrow. Though still curated by those jazz musicians of
old notwithstanding. It is with the good fortune that their numbers are almost inexhaustible.

​This series will highlight some of these talented individuals and what they've been up to musically of late:​  First up...

THANDI NTULI

Pianist and vocalist Thandi Ntuli released her sophomore album, Exiled, early in 2018. The Soshanguvean (Pretoria, South Africa) artist followed up her critically acclaimed and award nominated debut album, The Offering, with a wildly imaginative and experimental record that demonstrates her almost mastery of ‘Nu-Jazz’ for lack of a better term; a marriage of traditional African music and American jazz. The offspring that is produced here is a child of an art form whose fluidity leads one away from the known shores towards a horizon that may be perhaps uncertain but ever looming, always forward. The union is not just between specific genres of music but also between peoples separated by the Atlantic; however, not from a shared history, trauma, and destiny. One of the standout tracks is “Cosmic Light”; which highlights Ntuli’s gifts as a songwriter and musician. A piece that evokes the entire emotional gambit of the listener.

-Wulfgar Darkenwald, Jr.