a day ago
Kippie Moeketsi's global influence: what made the South African saxophonist so great
One of the most influential artists in South Africa's rich history of jazz is Kippie Moeketsi. He was born on July 27 2025 and passed away at only 57.
Like Moeketsi, Salim Washington plays the saxophone and composes jazz. As a professor of global jazz studies, he also teaches students about Moeketsi's work and researches South African jazz.
As part of our coverage of Moeketsi's centenary we asked him about the music behind the man.
Who was Kippie Moeketsi?
Kippie Moeketsi was born Jeremiah Morolong Moeketsi on July 27 1925. He was a jazz virtuoso, a modernist and cultural icon from South Africa, active from the 1940s to the 1970s. He was highly regarded among his peers and enjoys the reputation of being a musical genius.
He garnered his reputation early on as a member of the famous South African group, the Manhattan Brothers. He came of age among a coterie of outstanding local artists, including Mackay Davashe, and younger lights such as Dollar Brand (now Abdullah Ibrahim) and Miriam Makeba.
During the early part of his career he was a close associate of fellow musical visionary, pianist, composer and arranger Pat Matshikiza. With him he recorded Tshona and the more experimental Umgababa.
Why is he often compared to Charlie Parker?
Perhaps Moeketsi's most enduring contribution is as a member of the Afro-Diasporic modernists. The musical modernists were celebrated in the US as so-called beboppers. The musicians themselves did not come up with the term bebop; they preferred the term modern music for their artistry.
That movement was centred on another genius saxophonist, US jazz star Charlie Parker, known as Bird, who died at 35 in 1955. Because Kippie admired Bird, and because he was of the same generation, and because his mythology (including his penchant for drinking too much) resembled Parker's, Bra Kippie was often compared to Bird and was even referred to as South Africa's Charlie Parker.
This is more about the mythologies erected around these two giants; the musical record does not warrant the conflation of their legacies. (In the US one could rather make a musical case for saxophonist Sonny Stitt, or in South Africa one could think of saxophonist Barney Rachabane, as disciples of Parker.)
However, Moeketsi did inhabit many of the attributes that made Bird so important. First of all, he was a modernist who mastered the art of double timing (playing twice as fast as normal, 16 notes rather than eight) and could seamlessly employ this method wherever he felt musically justified.
