Mongezi Feza
b. 1945, Queenstown, South Africa, d. 14 December 1975, London, England. Feza, nicknamed Mongs, began playing trumpet at the age of eight and was gigging regularly by the time he was 16. He took part in the 1962 Johannesburg Jazz Festival, where Chris McGregor invited him and four more of the best players at the Festival to form a band, the legendary Blue Notes. As a mixed race band it was impossible for them to work under apartheid and, in 1964, whilst touring Europe, they decided to settle there. After a year in Switzerland they went to London, where, evolving into the Chris McGregor Group, they made a huge impact in the UK Jazz scene. As well as McGregor's Group and the big band Brotherhood Of Breath, Feza gigged and recorded with Dudu Pukwana and Johnny Mbizo Dyani (who were both colleagues in the McGregor group), Robert Wyatt (who, like Pukwana, had Mongezi's marvellous composition Sonia in his repertoire), Keith Tippett's Centipede, and Julian Sebothane Bahula. Feza's stinging, restless trumpet contributed hugely to the special edge of the McGregor Group and was a kwela-inspired counterpart to Don Cherry's folk-like melodies in the Ornette Coleman Quartet. Feza was very much affected by the lack of recognition that he and his colleagues had to contend with but, whatever his personal problems, he transformed them into an exhilarating blend of South African and free jazz traditions. His death in 1975 was a shock to his colleagues, dispiriting some of them, such as Dyani, far beyond the musical loss. The official cause of death was pneumonia, but it has been claimed that this was aggravated because Feza was left sick and unattended in a police cell after an arrest for disorderly behaviour. Shortly after his death, the remaining Blue Notes recorded the tribute BLUE NOTES F or Mongezi, released in 1976.