Big Idea

This is the second time I've seen this hugely impressive jazz-steeped hip-hop foursome from Wentworth, Durban, and the experience has been exhilarating. Here are four fellas who've not even got their demo down yet (in the studio as I write) but are more accomplished than most of the new bands I've seen touting their debut albums of late. Maybe there's something to be said for the slow pace of Souf Efrika.

Tonight they are at the Centre For Jazz and Comtemporary Music at the University of Natal, Durban. If that sounds like a mouthful, it's nothing like the torrent that streams from the passionate frontman on rhymes. An intriguing character, Quincy sports a spectacular physique and a beautiful face behind comfortingly lived-in dreads. In this case though, while it certainly can't hurt, Big Idea don't need their great look. The music is enough, and this demanding, somewhat senior crowd of jazz afficianados - led by host Mr Darius Brubeck - certainly don't fail to recognise the quality, or the heart, of what they're hearing. The small smoky room soon feels like a family.

They are joined tonight by Pakie, a talented percussionist who slaps his drums and shakes an array of instruments with purpose and intuition. Is it wrong that I should be surprised to see an unsigned band collaborate with such maturity and humility? But then before I found out how far down the road they were (or weren't), I was sure that A'we! A'we! had to be presently dominating the South African airwaves. For the second time, I follow its artful verses to the call-to-arms chorus as helplessly as if Quincy were a modern day Pied Piper. With a grace and confidence that I have not seen in many frontmen, he raps about where he is from - 'I know Durban like the back of my hand' - and how it has shaped him. Supported by superb keyboardist David Smith, skilled bassist 'Mr Musgrave', and solid drummer Gareth Gale, he has an audience that can know little of what he is rhyming about completely transfixed.

Aware of time constraints on the venue, we are expecting the other potential single - What kind? What kind? - to be the curtain closer. Make no mistake, this is a band with a social conscience and here Quincy employs a colloquialism to express his incredulity at attitudes he's confronted, with a large helping of humour and no hint of bitterness. I can't believe my luck therefore when they launch softly into something that is obviously still so new it feels uncomfortably private. This is easily their most beautiful song of the night but it is earned from tragedy and in this small room in my hometown, watching Quincy struggle with some of the lyrics is not an easy thing. 'I always knew I'd die a violent death, I knew from when I was three, But this can't be right, Leave her, please, just take me'. He has imagined himself into the mind of a friend as he was being murdered, his girlfriend raped and facing the same fate. It is not an unfamiliar story.

While I am no regular to the South African music scene, I sense that there is something new happening with this band and judging by the crowd's reaction and enthusiastic reviews heralding the 'loudest voice out of Durban’s hip-hop youth culture', I'm not alone. Bits of this heavenly, tragic place are being sewn up in Quincy's rhymes and my biggest idea is that they get heard as far afield as possible.

When: 4/04/05
Who: Big Idea
Where: Centre For Jazz and Comtemporary Music, Durban
Review: Jane Rich