Tania Maria on South Africa tour

Maria magic in the wings / Peter Feldman @ Independent Online

Brazilian jazz star Tania Maria is making a habit of performing in South Africa – and she loves it.

Her trip here this month for Standard Bank Joy of Jazz will be her fifth visit: “I have so many good souvenirs from South Africa,” she says with a laugh.

Maria is a dynamic musician who will bring her infectious Latin rhythms to the event, sounds that will form a strong musical contrast to a programme that also features illustrious names such as Wynton Marsalis, McCoy Tyner, Gerald Veasley, Jeffrey Lorber and Alexander O’Neill.

Speaking by phone from Paris, where she has been living since the 1970s, Maria tells me that the music she plays is inspired by the people. “I’m not a big commercial person and I cannot tell you now what I will do on stage, but I’m going to look at the South African people and they are going to inspire me to play my music. I need the reaction of the people. I have to see it and feel it. I don’t have a programme as such. I go with the flow.”

Maria, who has more than 25 albums to her credit over a span of four decades, is keen to work with South African musicians because she feels that she can learn from them.

Born in São Luís, Maranhão, northern Brazil, Maria, who has a degree in law, married early and had children. She started to play the piano at the age of seven and became leader of her band at 13.

Her band of professional musicians, who had been organised by her father, won first prize in a local music contest. She went on to play for dances, in clubs and on the radio.

Her father, a metal worker and a gifted guitarist and singer, had initially encouraged her to study piano so that she could play in his weekend jam sessions, where she first absorbed the rhythms and melodies of samba, jazz, pop and Brazilian chorinho.

Since then, she has never worked in anyone else’s group.

Her first album, Apresentamos, was released in Brazil in 1969, followed by Olha Quem Chega in 1971, but it was a move to France in the late 1970s that propelled her on to the international stage.

Maria, 62, attributes her longevity in jazz to her inner strength.

“I’m just a person who, little by little, becomes freer in my thinking, in my body, in my soul and in my music. I feel very good about myself.”

Music has always formed a passionate part of Maria’s life. Her first performance in 1969 showed her potential, an ability to freely mix Brazilian rhythms and jazz harmonies, sounds that underpin her natural gift for spinning sophisticated melodies.

During her long, distinguished career she has performed at almost every major jazz festival in the world, but one that remains a career highlight – something she calls a “career souvenir” – was the time seven years ago in Joburg when she heard the audience singing along.

“I cried,” she recalls, “because I didn’t expect this reaction. My music is a simple thing and when I heard their voices I said to myself: ‘Thank you, they catch the message.’”

Maria is thrilled to be playing jazz in Africa again.

“Jazz music comes from Africa. Before everything, jazz was music to dance to and now, in my opinion, it has become sad.

“People cannot dance to it any more and musicians have changed it and it’s too fast. I don’t think all jazz actually represents what jazz should be because people cannot identify with it.

“A musician has the right to improvise and say what he feels, but too many use jazz to play for themselves. This for me is terrible.

“You must have rapport between you and your audience. I want to play for and with the public.”

Two new albums are in the pipeline: “I’m not the sort of person who follows a rigid recording routine. I like it to happen naturally.”

 Tania Maria performs on the Conga Stage in Newtown on Friday, August 26, and Saturday, August 27. She will be accompanied by Marc Bertaux (bass guitar), Edmundo Carneiro (percussion) and Hubert Colau (drums). This new stage is being built especially for Standard Bank Joy of Jazz to accommodate increasing audience numbers. It is one of seven venues that will be hosting the festival. - Saturday Star