In the past year, fans of South African jazz have mourned the loss of several influential musicians: Robbie Jansen, Ezra Ngcukana (August 2010), Vincent Kolbe (September 2010), and Hotep Idris Galeta (November 2010). The passing of Duke Ngcukana—brother of Ezra and a respected musician and jazz educator in his own right—in April 2011 deepens the sense of loss that permeates the jazz scene, particularly in Cape Town, where all these artists had their roots.

Duke Ngcukana was best known for the tune “You Think You Know Me,” a composition by Mongezi Feza (of the famed Blue Notes) that also became closely associated with Duke’s brother, Ezra.

In some sense, the brothers were destined to be musicians. Their father, Christopher Columbus Ngcukana, grew up in Langa township in Cape Town, which was built for the city’s Black African population, distinct from the coloureds—the latter being “mixed” (descendants of slaves, offspring of relationships between whites and Blacks, or of African peoples like the Khoi, San, and Griqua). Mra Ngcukana, as their father was known, was regarded as one of the city’s best baritone and tenor saxophonists. He started bands, toured along the coastal provinces, played instruments, and sang. Johnny Dyani, the bassist who played with Abdullah Ibrahim and Sathima Benjamin, said of Mra Ngcukana: “ Mra was the Albert Ayler before we even knew or heard Albert Ayler, because he was so-called avant-garde or free jazz.”

Duke was born in 1948, the eldest of Mra Ngcukana’s eight children. They trace their family heritage to the  Jwarha clan among the Xhosa people of South Africa. All the brothers—Duke, Ezra, Fitzroy, Cyril, and Claude—were also all professional musicians. 

Duke was named after Duke Ellington. He played the trumpet (an instrument his father had played briefly) and the flugelhorn, and he also taught mathematics and physical science, having completed a degree at the University of Fort Hare in the Eastern Cape. At the time of his passing, he was deputy principal of a school in Khayelitsha, a large, primarily working-class township to the southeast of the city center. In the 1990s, he ran a music academy, Music Action for People’s Power (MAPP), in Athlone, a coloured township across the highway from Langa.

As a musician, he played on the local club circuit and at jazz festivals.

His career also reflected the cross-racial (Black) collaboration between African and coloured musicians in Cape Town, despite the best efforts of apartheid’s planners. These collaborations included bands like Oswietie and Pacific Express. On occasion, he also performed with Abdullah Ibrahim—arguably the most acclaimed musician to come out of South Africa—who is known as a highly exacting and demanding bandleader, recruiting and performing only with the best. 

John Edwin Mason, the American academic and writer, who has written extensively on Cape Town’s music culture, described Duke last year as “a trumpet player extraordinaire, in the music scene and also, like his late brother, a fine person.”