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Cape Town was one of the great port cities of the world, as people from all over immigrated to this abundant city of trade for a better life. And out of this haven for immigrants, filled with a unique ambition and talent (historian Vince Colbe from the district six museum has argued) grew the culturally exuberant and diverse Cape Town of the 50's - a Creole culture, a vibrant community, a core of common experience, diversity, excitement - and music - a great jazz tradition.

"Look at me," says jazz singer Sathima Bea Benjamin. "I'm a combination of nations. I have many nations in me. I happened to come from St Helena - the island in the middle of the Atlantic owned by the British with Indian and African slaves - three races mixing for hundreds of years. It is diverse and wonderful. I find it very thrilling even though all your life you are told that you are nobody. That's changing on a world wide level and this country can take the front lead.

After leaving Cape Town in the early 60's, Sathima Bea Benjamin ended up in New York City. "The energy, the flow, the excitement of its many diverse peoples swooped me up," she tells, "it's a place that allows you ultimate freedom, for the creative urges to be yourself."

These are the two great cities of the world she says. And she's a citizen of both and isolated from neither because home she says 'is within.' And that's the faith, the courage and the indomitable human spirit, the freedom and energy that Sathima Bea Banjamin portrays. Later this month she is back in the country of her origin to perform at the North Sea Jazz festival, her first return to this country musically, to perform.

She was here in 1997 where she put together a tributary album to the Cape - called the Cape of love. It's a delicate and sincere multiple romance with the place she was born, the place she grew up - Cape Town, the place she adopted as her home, the place whose strong tradition of jazz she modeled on - New York City, and the great musician who gave her so much inspiration and faith - Duke Ellington. The album is beautiful because it is all those influences that make Sathima Bea Benjamin, combined effortlessly with a softness descended from greats like Billy Holiday, the rich propulsive colour of jazz, Ellington swing and a distinct African feel in tone and rhythm - creating wonderful stories - musical stories.

This album and all her music is indicative of her life - a healing of the rupture, the exile, the separation with Cape Town, the difficulties and insecurities of her career - together with the passionate expression jazz allows. "In jazz the number one ingredient is to be your own unique self. Who I am in a sense is that little girl from Cape Town but she has grown, she has worked and she has achieved."

And she did all of this in the terrifyingly difficult circumstances Apartheid imposed on the cultural tradition of this country. Whilst in exile (her husband) Abdullah Ibrahim named his trio Ekaya (in reference to home) and Sathima named hers Windsong in reference to the wind back in Cape Town. Listening to both their music in that period, the melancholy is obvious and quite overwhelming - however it was only in being abroad that these two great musicians could forge an unforgettable career.

"Europe in the 60's was hard very hard, culture shock, yearning for home. It was a struggling time, a time of survival. All the struggle is what takes you to jazz music in the first place. It is the kinship you feel with the black American struggle, but in New York we were surrounded with jazz musicians and actors that hade made it - and it gave us hope. The psychology entered into me."

In the great book 'Embracing Jazz', Sathima tells the story of how her and Abdullah's lives changed abroad quite spontaneously through an introduction to Duke Ellington. Hordes of people bloated the area backstage trying to get to him. After a while of waiting and thinking that it was a fruitless task - Duke Ellington comes backstage. "Somewhere along," she says, "he was looking at everyone and he caught my eye and called to me." She invited him to attend the gig that Abdullah was playing at, so, he asked Sathima to wait backstage till the end of the second set, when they went together to the club Abdullah was playing at. "As we got there they were just locking up the club. The owner saw Duke Ellington and immediately put the key back in the door. So they played, and very beautifully and then he asked me to sing. This was a real surprise and I wasn't prepared for it. I think I sang "I'm glad there is you," then we sat down. Duke was so enthralled he put them on a train to Paris met them there and cut an album, featuring himself on a track on the piano, the Abdullah Ibrahim quartet and Sathima. "And that really opened the door."

A university professor by the name of Carol Muller has written a thesis on Sathima, concluding that through Sathima's domesticity (marriage to a famous man) and through the power of jazz - she had found it within herself to transform this space of potential cultural and domestic oppression to a site of personal empowerment.

And when meeting this women, this state comes across clearly. She has had much to fight for, the ‘audacity' as she calls it to marry such a famous man, be in musical / academic competition to him and the infamous difficulties of being a female in a male dominated profession and being a mother amongst this as well. And as we talk in the interview her beautiful smile encompasses the memories, the occasional dispassionate grown talks of the pains, but her pose, her poise, her musical beauty talks of the victories she has achieved.

As she says, "Jazz is a liberating music, it allows you to express yourself fully and be yourself." Her name was not always Sathima, she was born Beaty Benjamin, named after her aunt, her father after not looking at her for six weeks (because she wasn't born a boy) decided to call, because of the similarities in look. But, despite all of that - she still managed to find the name that perhaps most belonged to her, a name given to her by a close friend - Johnny Dyani. "He was always very lost and sometimes depressed because being a jazz musician, when he had days off he was not feeling in good spirits. I would be like a mom or a big sister. And in 1969 on his return to London he sent me a letter, saying I never call you Bea anymore, I call you Sathima. (a name from his home in East London meaning someone with a kind heart) "I just loved the name - it sounds like music so I put it at the front of my name."