The perfect place to keep an heirloom

The most indelible interactions with my late maternal grandfather come to me in delightful vignettes. His roaring laugh; my first bicycle; his pride at my academic and sporting clean sweeps at prize giving; road trips down the south coast; and jazz. Loads of jazz.

Dalton B Khanyile (or DBT to his contemporaries), the liquor salesman and music executive, was also a musician. Ask those in the know and they will regale you about an influence that far exceeded his recognition, in life and death. He partied with Ndaba Mhlongo, ran riot with Simon “Mabhunu” Sabela, played with Blythe Mbityana, and inspired Hugh Masekela. His craft took him from community and beer halls around the country to clubs on the rest of the continent and as far as the stages of the storied Montreux Jazz Festival.

In my recollections, his dark skin glistens, his hair and beard grow free and ungroomed, and his generous belly is covered in a Gilbey’s Gin t-shirt and a matching cap. But he also cleaned up well, speaking eloquently the language of tailored suit, polished Florsheim shoes, and slim moustache. He was, in the tradition of all considerable jazzmen, hip to the core. Music would fill his home at the bottom of Mnyamana Road in Kwa-Mashu, Durban, whether through Oscar Petersen on the turntable or his own riffs in the garage.

I recall with amusement now how, at barely six years old, I thought he was rubbish at his craft. I would sit in the front yard, just out of eyeshot, listening to him and getting frustrated. How was it that he sat for hours, playing what sounded like random notes, when other jazz musicians played entire songs? Surely his abilities did not warrant the level of respect he commanded, I pondered. The stop-start flurries were, of course, part of his composition process as he perfected various sequences. This became apparent months later when I heard him play full songs at a hotel gig I was far too young to attend. I fell asleep after the first set, but what I did hear — and the thrilling reception from all in attendance — was enough to convince me of his prowess on the tenor sax.

We lost DBT in 1994, and because of some cruel cunning from someone who purported to love him, everything of material value he had intended to leave to his family was usurped. Ancestral land, city house, life insurance payouts, the lot. Miraculously, a saxophone survived. It was saved from the treachery that spirited away all he possessed by cultural giant Alfred Nokwe, my granddad’s old friend and neighbour, who bought it a while before his own death and entrusted it, with my mother’s blessing, to the culture. The vintage Selmer tenor sax now stands proudly at Kwa Muhle Museum in Durban. It rests among other exhibits — photographs and historical accounts of Black life in that city from the perspective of ordinary people and those at the political forefront.

We have at times longed for that sax, to have in our midst an heirloom that would enhance our sense of proximity to an underappreciated embodiment of the vastness of our historical musical bad-assery. In more recent years we wanted it back for more pragmatic reasons, when my eldest son took up the instrument at school (along with the euphonium and drumline). On both occasions we abandoned the idea.

In the dark days, the museum was a place where “native” men would come to collect their passes, with the varied indignities that would accompany that. The significance of the instrument DBT used to bring joy to so many people living in bondage, now resting in a place that brutalised so many of his kin, is not lost on us and is perhaps a clue to why, with nothing of his beyond-time-worn photographs, we have opted to keep it there. While I suspect that in time the Selmer may find its way back to us, for now, the best place to keep that heirloom is exactly where we hold DBT, in our hearts.