JJazz Against Apartheid new narratives from old.
Institutionalized racism on the one hand, denial and defense of exile on the other – how are these experiences processed artistically? And how do they flow into the oeuvre and consciousness of artistic work?
As we enter the 30th anniversary of democracy in South Africa, how can we bring sustainable change through the German concepts fo “künstlerisch-kultureller Austausch” (artistic-cultural exchange) and “Nachwuchsforderung” – the conscious policy and practice of transferring societal values, knowledge and skills to the next generation?
Jazz Against Apartheid began in Frankfurt in 1986 and has highlighted the role of cultural activism in the anti-apartheid struggle. The fight against apartheid was a shared fight with many different people and locations but with one objective: to end the terror of overall injustice caused by apartheid rule.
After the inaugural Jazz Against Apartheid in Berlin 1986. Juergen Leinhos and his organisation Kultur im Ghetto continue the event building on the SA exiles and growing the movement to progressive European musicians. JAA is a great depository of cultural memory and a complete archive of 25 years of exile history.
Today apartheid is dead, but the struggle continues. Leinhos, recipient of the OR Tambo presidential award (2021) for his commitment to the anti-apartheid struggle said: “Overcoming apartheid does not stop once apartheid – being a name and definition of a political system – stops. Since isolating political voices and groups not only from the political process, but from education, health care, etc. have not stopped, JAA has a legitimate reason to exist.”
The role of cultural activism in exile peaked through the international co-operation around South African jazz music. South African bass player Johnny Dyani was one artist among others who was forced to leave the country and together with European contemporaries used this art of exile to fight for elementary freedoms.
Through sharing the vitality of this music, JAA promotes the existence of the forgotten exiles, and their exiled art, inciting honor and pride for what artists like Dyani fought for and achieved abroad in solidarity with those back home in South Africa who struggled to free themselves from apartheid.
JAA is a bridge between geography and history, impacting on the future generations of South Africans and back on German society, asking what developments are possible from (exile) history.
“Beyond exile” brings much needed awareness to the valiant work of South Africa’s cultural exiles such as Johnny Dyani, Dudu Pukwana, Chris McGregor, Makaya Ntshoko, Pinise Saul, Claude Deppa, and photographer Jürgen Schadeberg.
After Dyani’s prophetic chants, “Think, it is good for you,” he dies at the inaugural Jazz Against Apartheid in Berlin 1986. Juergen Leinhos and his organistaion Kultur im Ghetto continue the event building on the SA exiles and growing the movement to progressive European musicians, but always built on the social consciousness of skills transfer and musical freedom. The JAA Archive if this era is a complete archive of 25 years of exile history.
New collaborations
Kultur im Ghetto in Frankfurt, Germany partnered with Sausage Films to bring the legacy of Dyani home to Buffalo City in 2022 for the first time. This concert was a first for South Africa, the Eastern Cape and Dyani’s home community of Duncan Village. The great value in cultural memory for the future generations and the hunger to hear the music and feel the spirit of yesterday’s cultural heroes has triggered a growing co-operation around cultural memory and the role of cultural activism :
New compositions and arrangements
Jazz Against Apartheid is a testimony to the passionate struggle against apartheid, a biography of a life in exile and a complete documentation of 25 years of exile history.
Although Dyani died shortly after the inaugural event in 1986, Leinhos has preserved this treasure for South Africans with roughly 100 Concerts, Poetry recitals, Workshops, Exhibitions and Symposia in Germany, Switzerland and the USA presenting the music of Johnny Mbizo Dyani.
Leinhos’s life’s work was recognised in South Africa with the prestigious OR Tambo presidential award (2021) which triggered the return of the political and cultural achievements of exiled South African jazz musicians together with the supportive creative and collaborative German jazz musicians to South Africa for the first time in 2022.
Jazz Against Apartheid Homecoming Tour of 2022 united old fighters for elementary freedoms with new and future generations, thus bridging the gap between geography and history, built around the timeless musical compositions of Johnny Dyani. 
To become familiar with a part of our own exile history aims in different directions. On the one hand, we want to make an essential aspect of the buried cultural heritage accessible to a young generation of professional jazz musicians who have grown up in the post-apartheid society. And also to make others aware with this “homecoming” of the richness of the artistic heritage that has been cultivated over decades in Europe and especially in Germany.“Our concern was and is to save this art of exile from oblivion with the music of Johnny Dyani. In our project “Jazz against Apartheid” we therefore also see a key for the cultural memory of South Africa. And we are convinced: the life works of Johnny Dyani, Chris McGregor, Neville Alexander (pedagogy of liberation), Jürgen Schadeberg (photography), Ben Khumalo (Bible translations in 10 languages) and Vusi Mchunu (poetry) deserve to be heard everywhere in the world – not least by the citizens of South Africa.” Jürgen Leinhos
Mr Jürgen Leinhos, a now 82-year old German, and the Frankfurt-based initiative „Kultur im Ghetto” (Culture in the Ghetto), brought the Jazz Against Apartheid concert series to life in 1986 in cooperation with the South African composer, bandleader, bassist and composer, Johnny Mbizo Dyani, who tragically passed on in the same year.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has bestowed the Order of the Companions of O.R. Tambo in silver in 2021 on Mr Leinhos for his commitment and determination against apartheid and for standing by the oppressed and fighting for their cause as an anti-apartheid activist. The award was accepted at the Sefako Makgatho Presidential Guest House, on Mr Leinhos’ behalf by the South African poet and director Mr Vusi Mchunu, who spent many years in exile in Germany.
“I studied, lived and was culturally active in the German anti-Apartheid Movement, whilst in exile in Berlin. As a writer, a poet, Herr Juergen Leinhos invited me to participate in a number of Jazz Against Apartheid concerts, moreso the workshops where I rendered poetry and shared information on the dire situation in our country then. For South African Jazz musicians based in Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, the U.K. and Denmark, these concerts were always a highlight of the year, and an opportunity to contribute in the solidarity work.” Vusi Mchunu
A discussion with Juergen Leinhos
Neville Alexander, South African political scientist, said to Juergen, “Don’t be astonished if what will happen in South Africa, will be more or less the same, as what happened in Germany, that the ones who are went into exile are not welcome when they come home to their own countries.
This is an experience that German intellectual artists had when they had to leave, Nazi Germany during the Nazi period. When they returned, they were looked upon with suspicion or outright rejection. The quote “to return or to stay,” is a quote by a German author called Klaus Mann, he is the son of Thomas Mann. Jazz Against Apartheid changed this to say between returning and staying in exile. It’s that situation in-between. You’re not quite home at home. You’re in an existence in-between because of the experiences of the people in exile.
As Jürgen Leinhos explained, “If conditions are bad, for people, if the political conditions are awful, it’s usually the best people who leave a country and who have their works, done not in the country they live. It’s that people who go into exile, very often create marvellous works in exile in those conditions under exile. It was not just musicians, not just artists, also political people like Neville Alexander. Under the conditions of exile they do create wonderful works. And they teach us to listen. And this is why they’re so very helpful and fruitful for our society as well, for the society in which exiles live.”
This was part of the special mission of Jazz Against Apartheid, Jürgen Leinhos and his Frankfurt-based initiative “Kultur im Ghetto” (Culture in the Ghetto).
The archive includes, Posters and flyers from 1986 to 2018 by Manfred Feith-Umbehr, Siegfried and Jonas Lohse; Journal articles and Books: from 1986 to 2016; more than 100 photos 1983 – 2016 and sound archives based on the Discographia Johnny and the radio programs by Peter Wilson.
