The senior trombonist and singer Jonas Gwangwa is a South-African icon. In his moving and swinging township-jazz, in which he chants about his motherland, all continents meet. He is one of the famous names, next to the singer and political activist Miriam Makeba and trumpeter Hugh Masekela, who started out with Jazz Epistels – the first black South-African group ever to make an album. After the authorities, at the beginning of the seventies, passed some laws that forbade blacks to gather, the musician leaves his native country. He tours Europe with the production King Kong for a while and studies at the Manhattan School of music. He establishes himself as a composer and arranger. Ten years in a row he leads Amandla – the cultural ANC-tour and he wins an Oscar for the soundtrack of Cry Freedom. After Mandela had been liberated, he, just like Makeba and Masekela, returned to his native country after 30 years of exile.
