Zim Ngqawana counts as a representative of the new generation of South African musicians who have a fresh outlook on the country's jazz and traditional music. Born in 1959, the sax player, youngest in a family of five children, only learned to play at the age of twenty-one. At one point, with his university's big band, he attended a congress of the International Association of Jazz Educators, where he was promptly offered a grant to attend workshops with Yusef Lateef, Archie Shepp and Pharaoh Sanders at the Max Roach Institute of Jazz in Massachusetts. Back in Africa, he played in Abdullah Ibrahim's and Hugh Masekela's bands and put a lot of energy into forming his own combos, with whom he explored the limits of African folk, jazz, world music and classical. Not only dance and theater companies showed an interest in his work, sax player Paul van Kemenade did as well, bringing him to the Netherlands in '93 for a tour. Ngqawana has released two of his own albums: Zimology and The Zimphonic Suites, on which he combines old South African indigenous rhythms with his own modern jazz interpretations.
