The Star, South Africa's largest newspaper, called him 'the most visible, hardest working younger man in jazz'. Zim Ngqawana counts as a representative of the new generation of South African musicians who offer a new perspective on the country's jazz and traditional music. The sax player, born in 1959 as the youngest of five, only learned to play at 21. Together with his university's big band, he visited an International Association of Jazz Educators congress, where he was promptly offered a scholarship to follow workshops with Yusef Lateef, Archie Shepp and Pharaoh Sanders at the Max Roach Institute of Jazz in Massachusetts. Back in Africa, he focused all of his energy on forming his own combos, with whom he explored the borders of African folk, jazz, world and classical music. Not only dance and theater companies were interested in his work, but also sax player Paul van Kemenade, who brought him to the Netherlands for a tour in 1993. Ngqawana has released two of his own albums: Zimology and The Zimphonic Suites, on which he combines old indigenous South African rhythms with his own modern jazz interpretations.
