In a development that has sent shivers down the spines of jazz puritans and BBC schedulers alike, South African piano prophet Abdullah Ibrahim has shuffled off this mortal coil at the ripe old age of 91. The news, delivered with the solemnity of a funeral march played on a kazoo, confirms that the man who made 'Mannenberg' the unofficial soundtrack of the anti-apartheid struggle has finally taken his place among the ancestors. And what do we do when a legend dies?
Why, we throw a concert at the Royal Albert Hall, of course, because nothing says 'respect' quite like a corporate-sponsored tribute with an interval sponsored by gin. The BBC, never one to miss an opportunity to wheel out a talking head or three, has already announced a gala event featuring the surviving members of Ibrahim's various ensembles, a hastily assembled choir from Soweto, and probably a few buskers from the Tube who can fake a Rhodesian accent. But let us not mock the living for their clumsy reverence.
Ibrahim was a titan, a man whose fingers danced across ivory keys like the ghosts of Shaka Zulu and Thelonious Monk having a tap-dance-off in a shebeen. His music was a defiant act of joy in the face of brutal oppression, a sound so pure it could make a Boer cry into his biltong. And now he is gone, leaving behind a legacy that the BBC will package into 45-minute segments with a watery-eyed presenter narrating over the top.
The concert, of course, will be a sell-out, because the British public loves nothing more than a good cry over a dead genius, preferably accompanied by a glass of warm white wine and a feeling of vague moral superiority. One can only imagine the backstage negotiations: 'Gentlemen, we need a four-minute slot for the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to say something about 'unity in diversity' before the encore. Can we cut the bass solo?
' Meanwhile, Ibrahim himself is probably somewhere in the great beyond, playing a celestial grand piano made of starlight and liberation, wondering why the terrestrial world still insists on turning profound grief into content for the 10 o'clock news. So raise a glass of something distilled from the tears of apartheid, let the music wash over you, and remember: when a genius dies, the circus begins.
