Last week I went to a city jazz concert and got homesick

Last week I went for jazz. And I got homesick. South African artiste Jonathan Butler was top billing.

I have loved Butler’s music since I was 10 in the exile days when he was still playing mainly R’n’B. I transitioned with him when both of us got older and I started appreciating jazz. Also there was Mozambican-born fellow South African Jimmy Dludlu.

I had been looking forward to the concert from the moment I saw the billboards on Waiyaki Way, Nairobi, three weeks back. I was looking back to it even more now. See while a certain capital city in a country I live in was making it into the international spotlight as ‘most intelligent African city’, South Africa had made it to the international narrative for that disastrous State of the Nation Address 2015 with jammed signals and beefy security guys ‘escorting’ some red-overall wearing MPs out of the South African august house.

And there were other public relations disasters for SA at this time which shall go unmentioned because, well, if Nation Media Group and eAfrica News didn’t cover it, why should I be the one to expose my country?

Then when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, a friend working at said media house noticed via Facebook that on the Sunday of the jazz, one of my country’s First Ladies had been kicked out of Nkandla for attempting to poison Number One. She tagged me with a question, “so even your First Ladies are witches?” I ignored her.

We are both in Nairobi, how should I know? Ncc!

Anyway, so I was hoping that Butler and Dludlu will change the South African narrative among my short term-memoried Kenyan friend.

When I arrived at Ngong Racecourse where the gig was happening, I was distraught that Jimmy Dludlu had already played.

But, while I know who Jimmy is and how brilliant he is, I was aware that most Kenyans apart from the really jazz loving lot, didn’t know who he was.

Sure he has been here before but I hear the last time he was in town even the jazz lovers were disappointed as there were sound problems in Kasarani where he was playing so this time around, he wasn’t given a more prominent performance time. But Jimmy did finally get to show Kenyans what he is made of in my presence.

With the generosity of spirit that I have often perceived among my fellow South African artists, while Butler was doing his set, he called Jimmy on stage to perform with him.

Anyone who was not blown away with their performance was being escorted out for being drunken and disorderly.

Jimmy played the guitar, Jonathan sang, the two of them played their guitars together in friendly competition and the audience were the winners.

But it’s this generosity of spirit by the slightly older and more Kenyan-known Butler for the few years younger Dludlu that made me homesick. It occurred to me that I have seen it when Hugh Masekela calls Thandiswa Mazwai on stage during a performance, thereby sharing his audience that he did not need to.

I have watched it when the South African Poet Laureate Keorapetse Kgositsile (or Bra Willy as we all call him) takes time to engage younger poets on their work, “maybe you should have ended your poem three lines earlier, what do you think?”

I have observed it when Zakes Mda flatteringly emails me to ask whether I have time to read his manuscript and give him feedback (and I’m thinking “Elder Genius” wants insignificant me’s feedback?)

Now it’s possible that aside from Sitawa Namwalie and Eric Wainaina (who are both not that old), this same spirit also exists between the older and the younger artists in this country.

And that perhaps I haven’t encountered it yet because I have not met nearly as many artists as I should. But in these pages and other fora, the few older artists I have read or overheard say of the younger, “these youngsters do not know how to write real books/sing real music/paint/act like we did/do” etc, even when one knows from talking to them that the old timer has actually never bothered to engage with the works of said youngsters.

Last week I went for jazz. And I got homesick.

Zukiswa Wanner is a South African author living in Kenya.