Isaiah Katumwa brings smooth jazz to dance reckoning

9 Jul 2021 - 11:30

Published under the Creative Commons Licence

Upon listening to Isaiah Katumwa’s remarkable smooth jazz album Dance Again, the first name likely to occur to a listener is Dave Koz. It’s a happy coincidence that the man himself is on the album. Except, well, it is not a coincidence.

Isaiah Katumwa.

Katumwa has expressed his debt to the American saxophonist, calling him his “long-time idol” – and indeed, his song with Koz is titled ‘Nsiima’, Luganda for “gratitude”. You may even consider the album’s superb, rousing eponymous track as a homage to 1999’s ‘Together Again’, which just may be Koz’s most popular original track across Africa – so that one could consider Dance Again a tribute album of sorts. But it is more than that.

Dance Again is a smooth jazz album with Africa in its DNA. It takes the call to dance seriously, a rather apt message given this present time. It is not quite preaching hakuna matata – your problems will not disappear – but it demands a reckoning with life through dancing. That insistence flirts with what appears to be one of African music’s raison d’etre: a soundtrack to the rhythmic movement of the body.

Of course, there will be questions as to the viability, these days, of jazz in any form. Does it still exist? Has it ever existed in Africa? Besides ancient fans of smooth jazz’s undisputed commercial king, Kenny G (along with Najee, Grover Washington, the aforementioned Dave Koz, and others), did anyone care even back then? Does anyone care now?

These are not easy questions to answer. And they may not be new questions either. After all, it was jazz music Fela Kuti elected to play upon his return to West Africa from the US. When it wasn’t quite working, rather than continue to play it pure, he created a hybrid genre called Afrobeat that found commercial success. Would that approach work today? It’s hard to say, but Katumwa, who has enjoyed some success playing live over the years, has forged his own path. He has had to repurpose the William Wordsworth dictum – create the taste for which he will be relished on the continent.

From song to song, despite the overall call to dance, Katumwa’s sax is super-tender – as though the dance it insists on is not the solo kind but of the romantic sort. The song ‘My Joy’, for example, offers percussive elements with underlying sax notes, all together achieving a lush effect. Anyone would be forgiven for imagining a delicately sentimental scene of cheek-to-cheek dancing while listening.

On the rare song featuring vocals, Katumwa makes it abundantly clear that the record belongs still to a smooth jazz artist. The vocals on ‘Nkwagala’ are there but not quite, usurped as they are by the saxophone’s melody.

On ‘What is Love’, the vocals, which only show up about halfway in, ask the titular question again and again, in the one song where a note just short of optimism comes to play. By the next song, the album’s sunny tone is back and conspicuous on the title and chorus: the sun will rise again.

That’s a sentiment we could all do with these days. In Katumwa’s new album, it becomes more than a sentiment. It is a creed.

Listen to and buy Dance Again here.