Nduduzo Makhathini has a wonderful touch and sound at the piano. As a South African artist, he inherits a grand tradition of cross-pollination between American jazz and the music of his own culture. Beyond the obvious associations (Abdullah Ibrahim and McCoy Tyner, for example), you can hear concrete echoes of Keith Jarrett and Brad Mehldau. His fourth album on Blue Note, The Myth We Choose, suggests the way that we all create our own histories and present conditions, and it is a gentle joy.
The new album, co-produced with Makhathini‘s 18-year-old son, Thingo Makhathini, is the most accessible and contemporary of his recordings. Though the pianist is featured on acoustic piano throughout, plenty of tracks have been given a shimmer of synthesizer, and guest vocalists bring a dreamy pop sensibility. Even the songs that are primarily piano trio recordings glisten a bit, and some are faded out to make their running time close to that of a “single”.
“Ongaphesheya”, for example, is a ruminative track featuring bassist Dalisu Ndlazi and drummer Lukmil Pérez that unfurls like a beautiful modern jazz trio track. Still, you can hear it moving into a more abstract section as it fades. That isn’t a criticism so much as an acknowledgement: The Myth We Choose wants to draw you in. My ears were successfully seduced. They were comforted, perhaps, more than challenged? However, the record feels great around your heart.
“Tethered”, for example, is the kind of jazz/soul mash-up that takes you away. Featuring Soweto native Thando Zide, it puts Makhathini in the mode of Robert Glasper—playing beautiful jazz piano harmonies on top of a sultry backbeat and throbbing acoustic bass while Zide puts across an R&B vocal that melts you. This side of The Myth We Choose is strong. The reprise of “What People Say”, featuring vocalist Omagugu (Makhathini’s wife), adds a similar sheen to a slow, meditative track. The first version is stately, taken at a conversational tempo, with just piano and acoustic bass that establish a relaxed swing only for Makhathini’s short piano improvisation.
This is the balance that the album successfully achieves. “Umbono” adds the clean-toned guitar of Keenan Ahrends and feathery accompanying vocals to create a song that levitates. The guitar “sweetens” the track without any real compromise. “Liyoze Line Nangakithi” is an atmospheric feature for Makhathini’s piano in conversation with gorgeous flute work from Shabaka Hutchings. This harmonically simple vamp allows the players to explore with feeling, using simple but appealing percussion and a final chanted vocal part.
The two versions of “Ḽiṅwalo ḽa Mubebi”, co-composed with singer/guitarist Muneyi, are utterly gorgeous and moving. The first statement uses potent chord shifts that could have come from a Keith Jarrett composition, combined with a humming (and barely present) synth pad. Muneyi’s vocal is breathy and direct, and then supported by harmonized parts in the second chorus. When reprised, it is treated as an unadorned duet for piano and voice, bringing the power of the song home in a melancholy way.
In the marketing for The Myth We Choose, Makhathini is described as a “healer and philosopher” in addition to being a pianist and composer (and, in fact, throughout the record, a very appealing vocalist). The album is being sold under the vague tag “spiritual jazz”—a cloying and haphazardly used term that doesn’t mean anything to me. Isn’t all jazz, all music, “spiritual” if it comes meaningfully from a person’s heart with the intention of moving the listener?
I don’t doubt that Makhathini is more than a musician or that the lyrics back this up. However, with the songs not sung in English, most listeners outside of South Africa will be left with the music for a “message”. I can tell you what I hear: a form of musical clarity mixed with yearning.
As you listen to the opening track, “Kuzodlula”, the connection between Nduduzo Makhathini’s piano and the emotive trumpet of Robin Fassie is close and delicate. The leader sings with a modest, measured voice, eventually supplemented by layers of harmonized call-and-response. As the song goes deeper, Fassie’s trumpet becomes more active, improvising with both lyricism and interesting twists and turns. The effect is a centered yearning, as if the pair of artists are reaching together for something just out of reach, but maybe you can help them get there.
Throughout The Myth We Choose, the virtue of simplicity recurs, with Makhathini working in one particular lineage of his idols, John Coltrane and McCoy Tyner. These artists, I would argue, were more varied than that, of course, but the modal chants in their music may be best remembered. “Kwamabili”, for example, is a breathtaking and simple trio track that states its melody and develops some variations in just over three minutes. “Primordial Egg” and “Ekuqaleni” both develop as harmonically static songs of feeling, the former an atempo ballad and the latter with a busy sense of interaction across barely two minutes and ending in an electronically enhanced coda.
The harmonically adventurous “Imvunge KaNtu” sounds more connected to the 21st-century jazz piano tradition (a bit thornier, flirting with clusters of piano polytonality) and climaxes with hand-claps and chattered singing. What it doesn’t take the time to do, however, is to really develop an arc of improvisation. As a contrasting color to the more meditative pieces, however, it plays an important role in the album.
If the “spiritual jazz” bandwagon always sounded this beautiful and inspiring, maybe I would find the phrase more welcome. Even with the lovely The Myth We Choose from Nduduzo Makhathini, I wish a few more tracks stretched past five minutes, further showcasing the pianist’s fluid ability to explore where the spirit could be taking him.