The Guardian, Friday 6 August 2010 16.32 BST
Robbie Jansen, who has died aged 60 of emphysema, was a self-taught alto saxophonist, flautist, singer, arranger and composer who played a key role in South Africa's Cape jazz scene. He became a local folk hero, because of his music and his involvement in the anti-apartheid campaigns of the 1980s.
Born in Harfield Village, in the Cape Town suburb of Claremont, into a mixed-race family, he attended Rosmead primary school, then Elsies River high school, after his family moved to the Cape Flats township. His father was a bandmaster with the Salvation Army. He often warned his son against getting involved in music, but the young Robbie learned to play the harmonica, concertina and then guitar, and by the age of 13 he had played in two school bands, the Debonnairs and Bizmarks, before joining another pop band, the Rockets, playing cover versions of British pop hits.
With the Rockets, he was both a singer and rhythm guitarist, but he switched to alto saxophone after they entered a Battle of the Bands competition, famously teaching himself to play in just six days, at the age of 20. His band were the victors, and earned themselves a trip to London.
Back in Cape Town, Jansen became one of the artists determined to create a distinctive South African musical style. The mid-70s was an exciting time in Cape Town, largely because the country's greatest jazz pianist was back in the city. Abdullah Ibrahim (known as Dollar Brand until his conversion to Islam) had left South Africa in the 60s to live in Europe and then the US, and to work with Duke Ellington.
On his return in 1973, Ibrahim began working with local musicians including Jansen and the tenor saxophonist Basil Coetzee, whose family were forcibly removed from District 6 in the Cape Town inner city to the Manenberg township. Both he and Jansen played on Ibrahim's 1974 album Mannenberg – Is Where It's Happening, which became famous for its exquisite, lilting title track, written as a tribute to the township (but with an extra n mysteriously added). It was rightly hailed as a classic of Cape jazz, became a huge hit in South Africa's townships, and would provide a soundtrack for the battles against apartheid that were to follow.
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/aug/06/robbie-jansen-obituary
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