In the decade since the fall of South Africa’s apartheid system, the country has experienced a complete transformation.  Jazz, a music that developed through cross-racial artistic collaboration, has played a significant part in these changes.  So, it’s more than appropriate that as part of the 10-year anniversary of this event, Cleveland-based jazz label Heads Up will emphasize its series of South African releases.

“South Africa has a diverse culture and they’ve been able to take the best from the global music scene and incorporates it into their own thing,” Heads Up President Dave Love says.  “These are some resilient people who have for so many years had to get through unspeakable times.  It’s amazing what they’ve been able to accomplish in a relatively short period of time.”

Heads Up has been building its presence in South Africa throughout the past few years.  In 1999, Love brought vocalist Joe McBride to perform at the Cape Town Jazzathon festival.  The following year, when steel drum player Andy Narell performed in Johannesburg, Love realized that his company’s musicians have a significant following in that part of the world.  He also became enamored with the sounds he heard while he was down there.  “South Africans have taken Western rhythms and harmonies and fused them with their own indigenous types of music,” he says.

When Love traveled throughout the country, he met musicians in different cities as well as in nearby Zimbabwe who, he says, “had known each other but never played together.” So he assembled such South Africans as trumpeter Hugh Masekela and guitarist Jimmy Dludlu alongside Americans like McBride and Narello for the Smooth Africa disc, which Heads Up released in 2000.  The follow-up, Smooth Africa II, came out last year and included the vocal group Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

With relaxed rhythms throughout both discs, keyboards, and especially their title, a connotation of the smooth jazz radio format in the United States comes immediately to mind.  Love says that it was not his intention to aim for commercial playlists.

More traditional South African musicians are the focus of Heads Up’s recent releases.  The company is distributing Ladysmith’s all a cappella Raise Your Spirit Higher in the United States.  The disc is the group’s first recording since 1997.  Different combinations of acoustic jazz groups are featured on Africa Straight Ahead.  These bands merge America’s bop influence with indigenous African sounds.

Africa Straight Ahead closes with pianist Hotep Idris Galeta’s “Shawn’s Uhadi Samba.” Galeta, who is originally from Cape Town, left the country in 1961 and during his exile he became friends with Paul Chambers and performed with such musicians as Masekela and Elvin Jones.  He returned to South Africa in the early 1990s and has seen the local jazz scene grow considerably since the years immediately following apartheid.

“There are a lot of young kids who have gone through the traditional South African music and pop scenes and a couple of these musicians are looking toward jazz,” Galeta says from his home in Cape Town.  “I’m impressed by the younger generation.  It’s made me hopeful that a particular genre of South African jazz will develop in this new millennium.  With the American flavor to it, but evolving into a whole different world music.”

Narell, who lives in Paris, has been visiting South Africa at least twice a year since his initial visit.  His trip in 2000 lasted five weeks.  He agrees with Galeta’s assessment of the abundance of musical talent in the country and says it’s clear why Love is so empathetic about creating more opportunities for South African musicians.  “You go down there and the people are so cool, and the music is really happening, you want to be a part of making it happen.”