eJazzNews Archive

Jazz Drummer’s Death “A Human Tragedy”: Lulu Gontsana (1960-2005)

Originally published on eJazzNews ·

On December 19, 2005, eJazzNews reprinted a Cape Argus report on the death of South African drummer Lulu Gontsana, who died late on Wednesday, December 14, 2005, at 45. Arts and culture minister Pallo Jordan called it “one of the worst human tragedies to befall our nation.” Gontsana’s drumming is preserved on records by the Jazzanians, Zim Ngqawana, Moses Taiwa Molelekwa and Miriam Makeba.

What the 2005 report said

The Cape Argus described Gontsana as a central figure in the shaping of South African indigenous jazz. Born in Ibhayi near Port Elizabeth, he came from a musical family: his grandfather played the organ and his father played trombone with a Port Elizabeth group called the Banacal Beans. His father’s records exposed him to American jazz, marabi, maskanda, mbaqanga and R&B. At nine he was taken with Peter Jackson, drummer of the Port Elizabeth band the Jazzmen, a group he later played in himself.

In 1981 he moved to Johannesburg, where Spirits Rejoice invited him to play alongside trumpeter George Tyhefumani and saxophonist Duke Makasi. A Ronnie Madonsela scholarship then took him to the University of Natal to study jazz, where he joined the university band, the Jazzanians, led by American pianist and lecturer Darius Brubeck, with Zim Ngqawana, Melvin Peters and Victor Masondo. The report said he toured widely, played with Abdullah Ibrahim and Miriam Makeba, and became Hugh Masekela’s drummer of choice. Jordan noted that Gontsana’s death came on the eve of the Exiles Re-Initiation Jazz Concert, which he linked to the revival of Port Elizabeth as a home of South African jazz, and that his death followed that of singer Sophie Mgcina. It closed with Gontsana’s own remark, made at an event in his honor, that jazz was more than a style of music: a way of life.

The Jazzanians and the Natal jazz program

Darius Brubeck, son of Dave Brubeck, joined the University of Natal in Durban in 1983 as a music lecturer with a brief to introduce jazz studies. The Jazzanians were the student band that grew out of that program. Their album We Have Waited Too Long (Umkhonto Records, 1988), produced by Brubeck, credits Gontsana on drums and percussion with Ngqawana on alto saxophone and flute, Peters on piano and keyboards, Masondo on bass, Johnny Mekoa on trumpet and valve trombone, Nic Paton on saxophones and Andrew Eagle on guitar.

What he left on record

Discogs credits Gontsana on more than 20 releases from 1976 to 2006. Among them are two Brubeck/Ntoni Afro Cool Concept albums from New Orleans in 1990, pianist Moses Taiwa Molelekwa’s Finding One’s Self (1994), McCoy Mrubata’s Tears of Joy (1997), the trio album We Three (1999) with Jack van Poll and Dave Young, Zim Ngqawana’s Vadzimu (2003) and Miriam Makeba’s Reflections (2004). Two albums by singer Sathima Bea Benjamin that list him, Song Spirit and Musical Echoes, are dated 2006, after his death.

Darius and Catherine Brubeck later told the story of the Natal years, 1983 to 2006, in their memoir Playing the Changes: Jazz at an African University and on the Road. For the wider field, see our guide to jazz drummers.

Sources

This page is based on an article from the original eJazzNews archive (2001 to 2018), with background and sources added in 2026. The original text is not republished here. You can read the original as it appeared on eJazzNews via the Internet Archive.
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