Press Article

2003 Oct 09   "Concord breaks the sound barrier"
Publication: Star, Tonight
Byline: Sandile Hlomuka

In the past few weeks, radio personality Michelle Constant posed the polemical question about what really makes local music fit the label “South African music”.
Music critic Don Albert problematised the issue further when he argued that it was silly to call Hugh Masekela a “jazz maestro” since jazz is an American music idiom. No big deal, perhaps, since Bra Hugh abhors the labelling anyway!
This question came to mind after listening to bassist, lyricist and composer Concord Nkabinde’s debut CD The Time, The Season.
The finely crafted eclectic offering will either handsomely vindicate Concord’s steadfast search for an alternative sound or knock his confidence pretty hard. Here the musician, while influenced by his SA roots, is pushing the envelope harder, and is asserting that he is a musical native of anywhere his soul dares to take him.
The Time, The Season boasts chants, acid jazz, R&B, the mantras of the Khoi and the San, Themba Mkhize’s influence, Zulu hymns, Chinese classic music influences and Spanish melodic delicacies. On his 14-track CD, the uninitiated musical ear can expect to be put on a tolerance trial.
Four months ago, before Concord released The Time, The Season, I posed the inevitable (albeit clichéd) question about the genre of what he was brewing in his home-based studio. His firm response was that he saw no need for his music to be “put in a corner and labelled this or that, it should just be good music”. A bold response indeed from someone who, in a career spanning almost 10 years, he has played across disciplines with some of the best in the country and internationally.
Soweto-born Concord (35) features in CDs of such great musos like Gloria Bosman (Many faces of Gloria Bosman and Stop & Think), Ernie Smith (Child of the Light), Wendy Oldfield (Pale Blue Dot) and Tamara Dey (First Lady), among others.
He wants to connect with “an open-minded listener”. He hates the idea of “trying too hard to sound smart” or to play for fellow musicians.
The Time, The Season took him four years - a good time for painstaking introspection. He had to wait for the “right time and season to share his message with SA, Africa and the world.” He is pleased that Gauteng’s Kaya FM listeners voted it the album of the week a few weeks after its release towards the end of June.
From an early age, Concord’s music taste was a mix of the sounds he heard in Soweto, like the Soul Brothers and Harare and sounds that were not typically black. His childhood friends always “found it odd that I was hooked on white radio stations like Springbok, where I could hear bands like Earth, Wind and Fire”. Unbeknown to them was that, with time, their friend would be a musical native of any space and season - if his musical heart so desired.
His funky track Let The Walls Fall Down is both a call for musical tolerance as it is a national and global clarion call for people to embrace each other more. He says the “unseen walls are even more destructive to our search for true liberty”.
A cross-cultural music collaborator by choice, Concord took part in the Nordic countries-funded Shuttle 99 Arts and Culture Festival in 1999 and in 2001 directed a joint China and SA music project entitled Beyond the Rainbow.
His attitude to music is grounded in the belief that “life is a special gift that we have been given for only a period of time”.The CD features a wide array of local and international musicians, including Rob Watson, Louis Mhlanga, Prince Lengoasa, Efrain Toro and Gito Baloi. Baloi’s spirit can be felt in Canciones de amor - a light samba-tinged tune with charming echoes reminiscent of Tananas. He also seeks to spread the message of responsible sexual behaviour as captured in Uhambâ Ubhekephi.
Like some of SA’s refreshing jazz artists, Feya Faku, Lulu Gontsana and Andile Yenana, he attended the University of Natal’s Centre for Jazz and Popular Music. With a B Mus degree under his belt, Concord taught music part-time in Joburg and Soweto in the early 1990s.
He also toured locally and internationally with the likes of Abdullah Ibrahim, Zim Ngqawana, Ray Phiri, Sergio Diaz and Joyous Celebration. At present he is a regular member of Johnny Clegg’s band.
Yet another challenge for this first-time effort is the fact that The Time, The Season was realised through sheer grit and produced through his new label, Drocnoc Music. Finance had to come from his pocket, his family and close friends.
“This is not an anti-establishment statement, but merely an attempt at moving frontiers and exploring new possibilities,” he asserts. He feels the time has come for artists to develop a keen interest to grasp the business side of their craft. And why not?
The brightly packaged CD is also a good start in branding by someone who believes that he is a music brand in embryo and an astute steward of his own dream. And whether this CD becomes a sales success or not, is perhaps a moot point. Instead, Concord deserves kudos for a musically solid work and for his guts to make music for a truly borderless world by every creative means necessary.