Abdullah Ibrahim’s Zen approach to music and interviews

Getting an answer from Abdullah Ibrahim is like drawing water from a deep well. Most experienced musicians will have their patter down, and will – happily or wearily – repeat a story they have told a thousand times before.

For Ibrahim, it might be about his upbringing in Cape Town under apartheid, his meeting with Duke Ellington in a club in Switzerland in 1963, his exile in the US or his triumphant return to his homeland to play at the inauguration of Nelson Mandela. They all seem like acceptable places to start a conversation, but Ibrahim politely declines all invitations to reminisce. Answers from the pianist, a lifelong student of Zen Buddhism and the Japanese martial arts of Budo, come dropping slow.

Ibrahim, who was born in a suburb of Cape Town in 1934, was 14 when the apartheid regime formalised the oppression of black South Africans, so one imagines that experience had a profound effect. He sighs and pauses, as if to ponder the folly of the question.

“For us,” he says finally, “the closest experience that we had, and still have, is of being at one with the land and with nature. And what apartheid was trying to do was to cut us off from that experience. We understood at an early age that the struggle was for our own humanity. The struggle is continuing through one’s life, and this is when we play music. The music is this quest to become one with nature, and to reach that point where we can experience the silence within ourselves, and at that point we are connecting with the universe.”

As a bustling port, the Cape Town of his youth was certainly more connected to the wider world than most African cities of the time, ringing to the music of many cultures. His background is strikingly similar to those of the great American jazz musicians who influenced him, a heady blend of the sacred and profane, of church music and late-night radio.

But it was, he adds, all underpinned by a deeper African tradition. He remembers learning Irish songs such as Thomas Moore's Endearing Young Charms, and "adapting them to a Cape Town beat".

Dollar Brand

As Dollar Brand – a nickname he acquired from the African-American sailors he befriended on the docks – he began playing with local dance bands and, in the late 1950s, he emerged as one of the leading voices of a generation of South African musicians who were embracing modern jazz, much to the displeasure of the white authorities. So who were the American jazz musicians who most influenced him?

Another long pause. “We are not in the process of name-dropping,” he says finally. “We didn’t have to look outside for our own experience. The largest thing that we experienced was within ourselves.”

But there is one American musician he is prepared to name. In 1963, having chosen exile over the increasing oppression of apartheid, he was playing with his trio in a little club in Switzerland when Duke Ellington walked in. It was a significant moment for both men.

Ellington later described Ibrahim as "blessed, because you come from the source". For Ibrahim, Ellington became a father figure, the mentor who would produce his breakthrough recording, and help him to bring his music to a worldwide audience. But Ibrahim doesn't want to talk about his most famous recording, Duke Ellington Presents the Dollar Brand Trio.

“The recording was just something that happened, but what was more important was this meeting. Ellington for us was not a great jazz musician: he was the wise old man in the village. I savour those moments, because I spent a lot of time with him talking and asking many questions.”

Does he remember any of the answers? "I remember he told me about a ballet that he wrote, called The River. He was talking about a drop of water in the stillness of the lake. The lake is still, and the sea moves, but it's an illusion that it moves, which relates to the sun and the moon. There is no such thing as moonlight: it is sunlight that is reflected."

During a brief return to South Africa in the mid-1970s, Ibrahim, who had converted to Islam and left his old name behind, wrote and recorded Mannenberg, a tune that was to become the unofficial anthem of resistance to apartheid.

When a copy of the record was smuggled into Robin Island, it was the first piece of music that Nelson Mandela had heard in decades and he took is as a sign that liberation was near. When the apartheid regime finally fell and Mandela was released, Ibrahim returned again to South Africa to perform at Mandela’s inauguration. So can he remember how he felt that day?

“People like Mandela, you know, if we understand the dynamic of who he was and where he came from, one has to see it in that context. Who is this person? What moulded that person? For us, when we write a dedication to events or to people, it is how we can celebrate this gift of great minds that we have the privilege of sharing. So for us,” he adds, laughing, as if the conclusion is obvious, “the so-called liberation was not a precise moment, it was a period”.

Art of not fighting

Abdullah Ibrahim plays the piano like he answers questions, sitting meditatively at the keyboard, letting the music flow from one tune to the next without interruption, relishing the spaces between the notes.

As he prepares to fly to Dublin for a much-anticipated solo performance in the National Concert Hall, his mind is clearly on music. He still practises every day and although he is unfailingly polite, he is obviously keen to get back to his piano.

“I have been studying Budo for many years with my great Zen master in Japan, and Budo means the art of not fighting. We practise for hours and hours, and days and nights. The same with music. You have to think about what you are doing. And then you reach a point where you don’t have to think about it, because once you think about it, it is gone. When you play, you let nature take its course.”

• Abdullah Ibrahim plays the National Concert Hall, Dublin, on March 4th as part of the Perspectives series. nch.ie