MUST DO: Jazz lovers get to CTIJF

Posted on Mar 17, 2009

Jazzinista’s we hope you’re planning ahead to catch the broadly diverse line up at this year’s CTIJF taking place in less than 3 weeks! Ranging from some of SA’s hottest current bands like Goldfish, 340ml and Siphokazi, then showcasing some of the less commercial but deeply intriguing South African jazz cats like Carlo Mombelli  & The Prisoners of Strange and McCoy Mrubata… through to two of our favourite international bands – acid jazz group Incognito from the 90s (still a friend of mine!) and the AMAZING Congo-Belgian all-girl group Zap Mamas (call me!) – And smoothly topped off with an edgy hiphp touch – Mos Def feat The Robert Glasper Experiment (to name but a few), it’s gonna be shaking in Cape Town! Surely this range of talent must put the festival on the global lists of ‘must attend’ jazz festivals.  Here is the full line-up. Just added to this list is the young and fabulous Zaki Ibrahim, read all about it below: 340ml; Carlo Mombelli  & The Prisoners of Strange; Goldfish; Kyle Shepherd Quartet; Magic Malik Orchestra Napalma; Ndumiso Nyovane; Pete Philly & Perquisite; The Robert Glasper Experiment; Shakatak; Siphokazi; South Paw; Stewart Sekuma; Al Foster Quartet; Arturo Lledo; Dave Liebman Quartet; Dianne Reeves; Emily Bruce; Freshlyground; Hugh Masekela; Incognito; Jonathan Rubain; Kyle Eastwood Band; Loading Zone; Maceo Parker; Maurice Gawronsky feat. Feya Faku; New York Voices; Peter White; Ringo Madlingozi; Rus Nerwich’s collective imagination; The Stylistics; Zap Mama; Jonathan Butler with special guest Dave Koz; Dr. Malombo Philip Tabane, “Opera Meets Jazz” Mike Del Ferro, Sibongile Khumalo, and Shannon Mowday; Abigail Kubeka, Cape Town Jazz Orchestra, McCoy Mrubata and Special Friends and Mos Def feat The Robert Glasper Experiment. To complete this year’s lineup, organisers of the Cape Town International Jazz Festival revealed that Zaki Ibrahim will join the other thirty-nine acts that appear on 03-04 April at Africa’s Grandest Gathering. While she refuses to categorise her music, what Zaki dishes out is a fusion of hip-hop, earthy soul, deep house, broken electro-acoustic beats and jazz-inflected vocal intonations. Still in her 20’s, the Toronto-based South African singer has taken up as her mission, the creation of smooth hip-hop. Born to an exiled South African father and Scottish mother, Zaki spent her early years shuttling between Cape Town and the city of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island  in British Columbia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Columbia> , Canada. She was drawn to hip-hop at early age and started to perform when she moved to British Columbia ’s largest city, Vancouver. Explaining the pull of hip-hop on her, the singer who has been living in Toronto since 2001 describes how as a child he listened...