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History
Soon after September 11, when a gunman rampaged through the Swiss regional parliament in Zug, Swiss television interrupted its news coverage for an unscheduled broadcast. It was Abdullah Ibrahim's African Suite, recorded in 1997 by the pianist and composer in Fribourg cathedral, with string players from the European Community Youth Orchestra. "It's because of the healing power of music," says Ibrahim, who believes musicians are miscast as entertainers when their role is more akin to that of healers.
Since he first fled South Africa in 1962, Ibrahim's increasingly spiritual and meditative jazz has won followers across Europe, the US and Japan and made him an icon at home. In the 50s as Dollar Brand (he took the name Abdullah Ibrahim in the 60s when he converted to Islam), he led Cape Town's short-lived flowering of bebop-inspired jazz. When the apartheid clampdown came, he became one of the most successful, and - with some 100 albums - prolific, musicians in the exodus, alongside the singer Miriam Makeba and the trumpeter Hugh Masekela.
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