Playing the Changes

"Playing the Changes is a dual memoir by husband-and-wife team Darius and Catherine Brubeck, focused around their cofounding in 1983 of the Centre for Jazz and Popular Music on the Durban campus of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Demonstrating how jazz functioned as a transformative force, the book documents the role played by the Centre, the Brubecks, and their students and colleagues in mounting cultural opposition to apartheid and anticipating the "new" South Africa. The Centre was a venue where students, regardless of race, could rehearse, perform, and gain exposure to a wide range of jazz-related styles, including fusion with African musical styles, and where visiting international musicians could play and teach. The Centre offered the first university degree in jazz on the African continent, with Darius focused on teaching and Cathy on organizing and managing numerous bands, concerts, and tours. The program was open to everyone. The book traces the challenges and opportunities Darius and Cathy encountered in getting the Centre off the ground, ranging from physical infrastructure and funding to admissions and curricula, as well as their constant efforts to surmount politicized racial barriers that obstructed both student and faculty participation. The book offers insider outsider perspectives on the jazz life, its fullness, and its limitations, alternating chapters from Darius, an American-born jazz musician who came of age amid racial segregation and Cold War political tension in the U.S., and from Cathy, a white South African. Each reflects on how they applied their respective experiences to living and teaching under the shadow of apartheid"--