Nduduzo Makhathini-The keyboard of fortune telling

Virtually every article about this year's "Artist in Residence" Nduduzo Makhathini mentions that he is not only a musician, but also a trained healer. But what does that mean: healer? We want to try to understand a little better what exactly is meant by this term in Makhathini's case and what influence this understanding has on his music.

Even before he became a jazz musician, Makhathini trained as a sangoma, a healer and fortune teller based on traditional African medicine, in his home country. The social and political significance of this traditional healing practice, which has been legally recognized in South Africa since 2007, is still enormous. It includes the healing of physical and spiritual illnesses, fortune-telling, birth and death rituals, but also the preservation of tradition and religious practice. "As a practicing sangoma, I use the piano for divination," Makhathini said in a recent interview, describing the inseparable link between his work as a healer and music: "It's like throwing the bones. Sometimes I just play something spontaneously, which is like a form of divination."

According to the WHO, there are currently over 200,000 sangomas in South Africa with almost 30,000 conventional doctors. They are consulted more or less regularly by around two thirds of the population. A sangoma practises on the basis of ngoma, a holistic philosophical practice that is around 4,000 years old and is essentially based on the belief in the spirits of the ancestors. In this sense, Makhathini was granted healing powers as a child by his grandmother, who was also a sangoma.

Makhathini synergistically combines three approaches in his music: Jazz, enlightenment, healing - he himself speaks holistically of "healing sonics".

Jazz: Nduduzo Makhatini ultimately found his way to jazz via the great spiritual avant-gardist John Coltrane. After accidentally getting hold of his album "A Love Supreme" in the library and reading the liner notes, in which Coltrane reflects on his spiritual awakening, Makhathini listened to a jazz album in its entirety for the very first time in his life: "I only understood my own voice as a pianist through John Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme'. I've always been looking for a way of playing that reflects or evokes how my people dance, sing and talk."

EnlightenmentMakhatini could hear Coltrane's African roots in his music like an echo. He always perceived this echo as a kind of transcended longing with which he could connect. For Makhathini, improvisation in particular manifests the voices of his ancestors and thus also collective experiences of suffering. Most clearly on his 2020 Blue Note debut "Modes of Communication: Letters from the Underworlds". Makhathini explained that ever since he accepted the gift of divination for himself, he has been receiving messages from the underworlds, which he tried to document on this album. What does he mean by that? He examines questionable historical narratives with the aim of breaking them down and opening them up to new interpretations. As he himself puts it: "This album builds a bridge across the Atlantic Ocean and questions existing narratives - such as the slave trade across the sea and how water was used as a means of transportation into slavery. Because in African cosmology, water is believed to create a healing space. So we reverse these narratives."

Healing: This reversal of narratives is an expression of Nduduzo Makhathini's efforts to pave the way for the spiritual healing of injustices suffered. In particular, it represents an attempt to heal the countless traumas that colonialism has left behind in the collective memory and in the bodies through music and with reference to African cosmology and spirituality. To this end, Makhathini designs his music as a protected ritual space that enables intense communal experiences and gives them structure.

To summarize, one could say that Nduduzo Makhathini's trinity of music or jazz, enlightenment and healing is about finding and conveying points of connection and affinity in relation to an inner homeland, culture, language and identity. He thus refers to a center that was collectively decentered and destroyed in an inhuman way by the colonial era and especially by enslavement, takes up the still existing traditional points of connection and creates a new center from them by means of the healing power of his music.

You can experience our "Artist in Residence 2024" Nduduzo Makhathini with three exciting projects at Enjoy Jazz this year: as a duo with Vijay Iyer (opening concert, BASF Feierabendhaus, October 2), with his trio (Alte Feuerwache, October 5) and solo as part of a Well-Being Concert followed by a talk (Karlstorbahnhof, October 6).