never gets old

If he were still alive, Abdullah Ibrahim would have certainly resonated with this notion. The pianist and composer is universally recognised as one of the fathers of South African jazz.

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His music blended South African musical traditions like marabi and mbaqanga with jazz influences, forging a distinctive style that reflected his life under the apartheid regime and his cultural roots.

Mannenberg, his magnum opus, became an anthem of South African resistance against apartheid as well as a commercial hit, selling close to 45,000 units, thanks to Gallo's distribution between 1974 and 1975.

The song was conceived as an ode to people displaced from District Six to distant townships by the apartheid regime. But if Manenberg the township is a counterpart to Soweto, then the song also forecast the youth uprising by at least two years.

"Jazz has always been about freedom," Maqoma continues. "It is music that resists confinement whether that's confinement of rhythm, of harmony, or of politics. Each generation hears jazz as a call to express themselves more fully, to break away from what has been imposed on them."