via NPR
In today’s session, we have a very special guest: one of jazz’s great ambassadors and, perhaps, the finest jazz pianist to hail from South Africa.
Abdullah Ibrahim, who was born in Cape Town in 1934, played with Hugh Masekela in The Jazz Epistles. Together, they became the first Black artists to record a jazz album in South Africa, under pressure from the apartheid government no less.
In the ’60s, Ibrahim left South Africa due to apartheid, and a chance connection with Duke Ellington launched his international career. He recorded under the stage name Dollar Brand for many years, before he converted to Islam and took on the name Abdullah Ibrahim.