After rising up from poverty and making a name for himself as a bassist in the rough and tumble world of Soweto, South Africa, imagine the thrill Bakithi Kumalo felt when he got the call to play a recording session with a bona fide reggae star, who would be coming to Soweto straight from Jamaica. Or so Kumalo thought.
“When I got hired to come and play for the session, they said, ‘It’s with Paul Simon, from Jamaica, Queens.’ I thought maybe that was part of Kingston, Jamaica, or something, right?” Kumalo laughs. “The reggae song, ‘Mother and Child Reunion,’ was popular on African radio, and it was a reggae tune, you know. But then I found out, no, he’s from Jamaica, Queens, New York!”
Nor was Kumalo familiar with Graceland, that mansion on Elvis Presley Boulevard from which Simon’s album-in-the-making would take its title. But he knew about Elvis. “In South Africa, we had heard about Elvis Presley, though we couldn’t spell his name because there was no school,” Kumalo recalls. “But as musicians, there was some music coming from America, and Elvis was one of them. We didn’t know what he was singing about, but the groove was nice. I didn’t know what Graceland was about, but I knew about Elvis.”
As it turned out, the backstory didn’t matter when the standard of musicianship in Soweto was so high, especially Kumalo’s galvanizing work on the fretless bass. That’s his inimitable playing on such gems from Graceland as “You Can Call Me Al,” “The Boy in the Bubble,” and “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes,” lending such a unique sound to the album that Kumalo was recruited to tour with Simon shortly after the album hit the charts.
“I’d never left South Africa until the Graceland album,” Kumalo says. “So things like, you know, Memphis, Tennessee, or ‘the Mississippi Delta was shining like a National guitar’ — when I was traveling the country, I was like, ‘Oh, so this is what Paul was talking about.’ Because really, when we recorded the stuff, I just focused on being a bass player.”
In any case, that was some 40 years ago, and while Kumalo has played many tours with Simon since then, having moved to the U.S. some years after Graceland’s release, he’s also followed his own muse. Over the years, he’s played with luminaries as diverse as Joan Baez, Cyndi Lauper, Herbie Hancock, the Tedeschi Trucks Band, Randy Brecker, Grover Washington Jr., and Mickey Hart, not to mention creating his own music.
It’s the latter that’s bringing him to the Halloran Centre this Saturday, March 14th, with his own group, The South African All-Stars. “All the musicians are from South Africa,” says Kumalo. “Everybody came here, some of them went to school here and then wound up living in the States. Sometimes we’d meet at events hosted by South Africa. So I put this band together to play the show in Memphis.” And for the players, there’s a poignance in being able to focus on the music of their homeland. When he was growing up in Soweto, Kumalo says, “music was always around, especially on weekends, when the cops stayed relaxed. Everybody’s home, drinking and eating, and that’s when the bands would start playing. During the week, if you don’t have a job, you’d better hide. But the music was something like a religion. Or, living in the country, where there’s all kinds of cultures, every language is like music. They sound like they’re singing, because it’s their language. Then there were the churches and every tribe would come in and dance and sing in their language. It was really exciting. People would dress up in colors and sing. Even the garbage man, when he’s picking up the garbage, is singing.”
It’s that kind of spiritual devotion to music that Kumalo wants to convey — not only to the audience, but to young local musicians. To that end, students from the Memphis Jazz Workshop will also be appearing in the show. “At every concert, I like to invite the kids,” Kumalo says. “I might put them on the spot, playing South African music. But it’s all about having fun. I’m so excited to work with them.”