List of Figures  ix

Preface  xiii

Acknowledgments  xxiii

A Tribute by Abdullah Ibrahim: "Sathima"  xxxi

Sathima: My Life's Journey as a Jazz Singer  xxxiii

1. Beginnings  1

2. A Home Within  11

Call: Recollecting a Musical Past  11

Response: Entanglement in Race and Music  33

3. Cape Jazz  53

Call: Popular Music, Dance Bands, and Jazz  53

Response: Imagining Musical Lineage through Duke and Billie  95

4. Jazz Migrancy  128

Call: Musicians Abroad  128

Response: A New African Diaspora  167

5. A New York Embrace  189

Call: Coming to the City  189

Response: Women Thinking in Jazz, or the Poetics of a Musical Self  217

6. Returning Home?  242

Call: Cape Town Love / An Archeology of Popular Song  242

Response: Jazz History as Living History  260

7. Musical Echoes  271

Call: Sathima's Musical Echo  271

Response: Reflections on Echo  274

8. Outcomes—Jazz in the World  283

Notes  297

Selected References  325

Index  337

Honorable Mention, Alan Merriam Award (presented by the Society for Ethnomusicology)

“[A] fascinating biography. . . .”—Bobbi Booker, Philadelphia Tribune

“Ibrahim has cited the loss of information as one legacy of apartheid, and the broader context—filling in those gaps—is also key to the appeal of Muller’s meticulously researched book.”—Marcus O’Dair, Jazzwise

“Muller . . . does a remarkable job in piecing together Benjamin’s life, work, and significance within the context of post-apartheid history.”—Brian Morton, The Wire

“Muller's biography-plus, of and with Sathima Bea Benjamin, is welcome for many reasons; first and foremost because it spotlights a brilliant architect of song who is far less well known than she should be. But Muller goes further. She challenges still dominant androcentric and Amerocentric jazz discourses, offering alternative frameworks that allow us to consider the dynamics of race, class and gender within whose maelstrom Benjamin shaped her sound.”—Gwen Ansell, Mail & Guardian

“Muller examines Benjamin's experiences with apartheid, her exile from South Africa, and how these experiences helped form her career as a jazz musician. Benjamin's life story is quite colorful, and Muller effectively captures the essence of that story with this call-and-response nature of the presentation and with a writing style that is both engaging and highly descriptive. Recommended. All readers.”—D. J. Schmalenberger, Choice

“Musical Echoes is a wide reaching and important missing link in the development of late twentieth-century jazz. This book needed to be written and deserves to be read with the same patient attention to detail as was poured into it by the author.”—Gregg Akkerman, Journal of Jazz Studies

“We get frank and rich recollections by Benjamin of her early life. . . . The sections on Benjamin’s childhood and early adulthood double as something of a social history of coloured cultural and social life in Cape Town before the National Party came to power in 1948. The book contains a rich description of talent concerts, dance bands, jazz clubs, and the impact of radio, records, and cinema on Benjamin’s imagination and musical education. It also deals with Benjamin’s complex racial politics.”—Sean Jacobs, International Journal of African Historical Studies

Honorable Mention, Alan Merriam Award (presented by the Society for Ethnomusicology)

“[A] fascinating biography. . . .”—Bobbi Booker, Philadelphia Tribune

“Ibrahim has cited the loss of information as one legacy of apartheid, and the broader context—filling in those gaps—is also key to the appeal of Muller’s meticulously researched book.”—Marcus O’Dair, Jazzwise

“Muller . . . does a remarkable job in piecing together Benjamin’s life, work, and significance within the context of post-apartheid history.”—Brian Morton, The Wire

“Muller's biography-plus, of and with Sathima Bea Benjamin, is welcome for many reasons; first and foremost because it spotlights a brilliant architect of song who is far less well known than she should be. But Muller goes further. She challenges still dominant androcentric and Amerocentric jazz discourses, offering alternative frameworks that allow us to consider the dynamics of race, class and gender within whose maelstrom Benjamin shaped her sound.”—Gwen Ansell, Mail & Guardian

“Muller examines Benjamin's experiences with apartheid, her exile from South Africa, and how these experiences helped form her career as a jazz musician. Benjamin's life story is quite colorful, and Muller effectively captures the essence of that story with this call-and-response nature of the presentation and with a writing style that is both engaging and highly descriptive. Recommended. All readers.”—D. J. Schmalenberger, Choice

“Musical Echoes is a wide reaching and important missing link in the development of late twentieth-century jazz. This book needed to be written and deserves to be read with the same patient attention to detail as was poured into it by the author.”—Gregg Akkerman, Journal of Jazz Studies

“We get frank and rich recollections by Benjamin of her early life. . . . The sections on Benjamin’s childhood and early adulthood double as something of a social history of coloured cultural and social life in Cape Town before the National Party came to power in 1948. The book contains a rich description of talent concerts, dance bands, jazz clubs, and the impact of radio, records, and cinema on Benjamin’s imagination and musical education. It also deals with Benjamin’s complex racial politics.”—Sean Jacobs, International Journal of African Historical Studies

“Sathima Bea Benjamin ought to share company with the likes of Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Betty Carter. . . . [She] never compromis[es] her own musical vision, refusing to either remake herself into an ‘American’ jazz singer or into what the world imagines to be authentically ‘African.’ She is who she is, Sathima Bea Benjamin, South Africa’s greatest jazz singer and one of the best the world has ever known.”—Robin D. G. Kelley, JazzTimes

“Musical Echoes not only introduces a very important vocalist, Sathima Bea Benjamin, to audiences who may not know of her. It also makes a great contribution to scholarship on jazz, world music, cultural theory, and the African diaspora. It challenges us to reconsider and revise the nationalist narratives that characterize much writing on jazz, and it provides a new framework for discussing the production, circulation, and transformation of musical cultures.”—Farah Jasmine Griffin, author of If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday

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