“A DANCE FOR FEYA” – AN EVENING WITH KHAYA MAHLANGU AT SEVENTY PLUS ONE

The music began even before a note was played. It was in the room. In the air. In the walls of the Library Café, a place that knows stories and knows the weight of returning to a sacred place for a second act. It was from this very café, a few months ago, that I penned one of my earliest, most spirited tributes to Khaya Mahlangu. And on this night, June 26th, 2025, I returned to speak. Not with ink alone this time, but with voice, breath, and witness to honour a man whose seventy-one years have been a symphony of soul, struggle, and sanctity.

It was a celebration, yes. But not the kind marked by spectacle. This was something rarer: an intimate rite of passage, an intergenerational offering wrapped in music, memory, and mentorship. In that room were not just fans or colleagues. There were friends, real friends, who had walked with Khaya through storms and sunshine across decades. You could hear it in the laughter, see it in the embrace, and feel it in the silence when he lifted the horn to his lips.

A Circle of Sound: The Ensemble

The ensemble that played with Khaya that evening was more than a band. It was a lineage made audible, a circle of musical kin. Each one had been touched by his hand, his heart, or his horn.

At the piano sat Mongezi Conjwa, a gentle but commanding presence behind the keys. Khaya has known him since he was in nappies.  He was friends with Mongezi’s father and watched him grow from infant to improviser, offering mentorship across the thresholds of time. On this night, that journey culminated in something beautiful: teacher and student, now peers in sound. Then came Sibonelo Kodisang, a force on the Alto Saxophone. I first heard this young man a year ago at function to honour Rene Maclean on a rare visit to South Africa. A descendant of Jacky, a lineage of horn players. And Vukani Cele, also an Alto man, both young lions Khaya has personally mentored over the years. Sibonelo has been under Khaya’s tutelage at university for five years, and you can hear the wisdom in his phrasing. It’s not just technique; it’s how he listens, how he waits. That is the Mahlangu method: teaching not only how to play, but how to be.

Nhlanhla Radebe on bass moved like water through rhythm, elegant and tall, evoking the grace of Ron Carter.  Lindi, my wife and a discerning jazz ear in her own right, leaned in during his solo and nodded. Her seal of approval is earned, not given. “This is real,” she whispered, and it was. Then came Lucas Senyatso.  Here memory swelled. Khaya and I first met Lucas some thirty years ago in Mafikeng, a young electric bass player still finding his voice. Today, he stands tall as a musician of deep repute, the recipient of awards, the respect of his peers, and the same spirit of humility he wore back then. Watching Lucas now, assured, fluid, soul-deep, was like watching the long arc of purpose land in the right place. And on drums, young Lungile Kunene, the heartbeat of the night.

Youthful, sharp, responsive. My friend Oyama and I, in our perennial fascination excavations of Miles saw Marcus Miller in Lucas, Herbie Hancock in Mongezi, Ron Carter in Nhlanhla. And here, in Lukhele, a flicker of Tony Williams. A sense of wild discipline. Of prophecy in the pocket. Together, they didn’t just play. They conversed. They conjured. They danced with the past, braided it into the present, and handed it to us raw and refined, tender and thunderous.

The Man in the Middle

And then, of course, Khaya Mahlangu. Master of the horn. Keeper of time. Storyteller without a script. At 71, Khaya plays with the elegance of experience and the curiosity of a child. He doesn’t command the stage with force; he inheres in it. He is not there to show you what he knows. He is there to remind you what music feels like when played by someone who has lived through all the seasons it can express. He did not dominate the evening. Instead, he shared it generously, humbly, profoundly. He let his protégés take flight. He handed them solos, gave them space, watched with pride. That’s how you know a true master: not just in how he plays, but in how he lets go. You can’t teach that. You embody it.

Khaya is a custodian of the South African Songbook.  Not just the charts, but the ethos. The pulse that connects Mankunku to Dudu Pukwana, Bheki Mseleku to Feya Faku, Winston Mankunku Ngozi to the youngest saxophonist in a Soweto classroom. That night, his compositions didn’t feel old. They felt alive. Because the man who wrote them is still asking questions, still stretching, still listening.

A Farewell to Feya

Midway through the night, the air shifted. We paused to honour Feya Faku, the master trumpeter who had passed away on Khaya’s birthday, June 23rd. The synchronicity was heavy. The pain was fresh. But what emerged was not mourning, it was music. They played “A Dance for Feya,” a piece Khaya composed years ago, which now in a kind of divine redirection, became a tribute to Feya too. The rhythm was reverent but alive. The horns mourned and rejoiced in the same breath. It was a song that carried both loss and legacy. It didn’t try to comfort. It tried to honour. And it did.

Khaya’s eyes, as the final notes fell, were quiet. Not sad. Not triumphant. Just present. As if to say: this is how we remember our own.

The Measure of the Man

What Khaya Mahlangu offers the world and offered that room, is not just music. It is permission. Permission to grow slowly. To master your craft without rushing. To pass it on. To not hoard your light. To raise up others in full view. To be as concerned with tone as you are with truth. To be spiritual without spectacle. To play with both your lungs and your life. He is, to my mind, one of the last true bandleaders of the old school. Where leading isn’t about being at the front, but about being within. In the pocket. In the vibe. In the pulse of people, you love and believe in. I watched Oyama nod, deep in the groove. I watched Lindi close her eyes during a solo and smile. I watched strangers become family, and silence become song. And I whispered, not for the first time: This is jazz. This is home.

As the night folded into its final set, I was reminded again why music survives where words fail. Because music doesn’t require you to explain. It requires you to feel. And what I felt, what we all felt, was that we had been part of something sacred. A celebration not only of Khaya Mahlangu’s seventy-one years, but of the principles that have guided him through them:

• Play honestly.
• Mentor generously.
• Live with rhythm.
• And when your time comes, hand over the horn with love.

So, here’s to Khaya. Not just for what he’s done, but for how he’s done it. With grace. With groove. With God in the breath and ancestors in the beat.

Happy 71st Uncle Grootman Bra Khaya. And thank you for dancing with us all these years.