Two remarkable books, with Photos, complete discography & 2 CD's in Sathima Bea Benjamin's Embracing Jazz. These books are more remarkable for other reasons than their comprehensive 'hidden history' information, attention to detail & excellent presentations - They were written, researched & compiled not by a South African, but by a Danish African Jazz enthusiast - LARS RASMUSSEN. These works of Music Art in print would be no big deal if South Africa were - after 6 years - a 'normal' music society. We aren't & we hate to admit that we knew nothing about this remarkable Cape Town Jazzsinger until a foreigner pointed her out to us. How embarrassing! Turn onto SAfm - the station for the well-informed and the SABC - The Pulse of Africa's Creativity?

Lars has been a friend & confidant of Abdullah's for over 30 years.
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I first saw Sathima on stage in Copenhagen in 1972 where she appeared at various locations, including the legendary Jazzhus Montmartre. Her natural appearance and the beauty of her voice immediately struck me, as she appeared without any accompaniment, singing only two songs before she left the stage to Abdullah Ibrahim. To this day I have remained an admirer of her singing, and it was an obvious idea to choose her as the subject for this the first publication in my new series of portraits of contemporary jazz musicians, Booktrader's Jazz Profiles, that will deal with people from what downbeat magazine names the category of 'talents deserving wider recognition'. Even though Sathima boasts no less than nine albums under her own name (including one Grammy nomination), and has recorded with some of the world's leading artists such as Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, and Abdullah Ibrahim, she is still unknown to many, even among those that enjoy jazz singing. At this moment, Dr. Carol Ann Muller of Pennsylvania University; also a contributor to this book, is working on a larger scholarly work on Sathima. The present book however is meant as a musical portrait. To cover all aspects of Sathima's singing I have asked a selection of very different writers to contribute, and to my great pleasure they all agreed without the least hesitation. Thus the book has become a collage of texts, and consequently some overlapping will occur, which hopefully will not disturb the reader.

And, if after reading the book you still don't know who Sathima is, we have added two CDs, a special edition of her recent South African recording Cape Town Love, and a compilation of material from her earlier recordings. They will tell you who Sathima is.

Thanks to all the contributors and especially to Sathima herself for supplying me with newly written texts and for permitting me to use photos from her personal collection.

Special thanks to Kiwa Meyer, Carole Adriaans, Lars Vester Petersen, Joe Colussi, and Matthias Winckelmann of Enja Records.

Lars Rasmussen
Booktraders Copenhagen, Denmark
Tel +45 33 120669
Fax +45 33 120498
email: [email protected]
website: www.antikvar.dk/booktrader