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Afropop's Sean Barlow interviewed internationally renowned pianist Abdullah Ibrahim at his hometown of Cape Town, South Africa during the 2004 North Sea Jazz Festival. Notorious for abruptly cancelling interviews with journalists he considers ill-informed or superficial, we were glad that Abdullah gave us almost a whole hour. At times, it felt more like being in dialogue with a Zen master. Abdullah would throw out questions to Sean's questions. And at one point he answered a question by getting up and doing his highly personal martial art form--stamping, striking, breathing in rhythm, and doing dance like steps in a circle. Abdullah told us that he had studied martial arts for 50 yearts. Below is a partial transcript of the interview. More to come.

Sean Barlow: We are celebrating the 10th anniversary of freedom and democracy. How does it feel to be a South African in 2004? What are your emotions?

Abdullah Ibrahim: We have achieved a lot. We have inherited a lot of negative things. Some inherited, some self-induced. All in all, we have come a log way and I'm positive in the sense that in some respects, we have almost become a model for the rest of the world on how to deal with conflict and conflict resolution. Conflict resolution by unpublished and unannounced negotiations. Negotiations done very quietly and not in front of the cameras. It is a lesson that we have been taught by these great leasders that we have. President Nelson Mandela, others are unsung.

SB: What is the movement from growing up in Capetown to today. What are you seeing in the evolution in terms of...are they the same issues that are being carried forward in a better way or are there different issues? Or what? In terms of reconciliation and integration vs. separate places to live and then so on and so on.
AI: What is collective guilt? What is collective achievement? S o, actually, it goes down to individual effort…so individual effort is there, the possibility to think and to create freely. This is what has been established. We have created an environment now where you as an individual can be creative without any barriers as they were during those Apartheid years. If you haven't experienced it it's very difficult to understand where it is now. That's why people find it very hard to articulate. Because it's not a question of just answering a couple of questions, it's very deep and traumatic. So you find mostly people don't talk about it. Because when you speak about it it's like reliving it. It's too painful. So how do you deal with pain? You move away from it.

SB: What is your memory of February 11, 1991. Where were you when Madiba walked out of prison? Where were you and what were you feeling?
AI: We were in Seattle. We sat up the whole night watching it. But some time before that we were alerted by the ANC that the talks had started already, that the negotiations had started very quietly. The negotiations, they told us, were on. This is again coming back to conflict resolution.

I have studied martial arts now for 50 years. When you go and begin studying martial arts, the first thing they tell you is "self defense." But the masters say, if you subscribe to self defense it is acknowledging that you have failed in conflict resolution by negotiations. This is the heart of all martial arts, which is the heart of all living. This is what was done in South Africa. Conflict resolution.

SB: So that you think is South Africa's great gift to the world, the model to the world of how you can deal with such horrible histories.
AI: Especially in this contemporary timeline. SB: Let's jump to 2004. What do you see going on in Cape Town with the jazz community or what is going on in South African music in general? What are the things that have caught your attention- things that you like or don't like?
AI: I have no idea what's going on.

Abdullah Ibrahim, Cape Town, April 2004

Interview by Sean Barlow

SB: You don't?
AI: I have no ideas what's going on and it doesn't even interest me. I don't listen to music. You see, our interest is we have a high incidence of AIDS. We have people dying of AIDS. We have some areas that are high in crime. We have the highest percent of obesity in the world. Higher than the United States. One out of every four South Africans suffer from a mental disorder. So we are not concerned with jazz. Are concern is always with ourselves. How can we push ourselves out of the comfort zone and strive for excellence within ourselves so that we can be hopefully a better human product, and so be helpful to those who are dependent on us.