By Stevens Muendo
Ghanaian Jazz icon George Lee was set to join the league of Africa’s celebrated musicians Oliver Mtukudzi, Hugh Masakela, Enoch Sontonga and Fela Kuti in receiving the coveted Special Recognition award at the 2008 Channel O Music Awards when the bad news broke.
Two weeks before the awards ceremony held at the Carnival City Hotel, Johannesburg, the legend succumbed to a terminal motor neuron disease, which had left him wheelchair-bound for two years in his Johannesburg home.
And a mournful mood temporarily engulfed the awards ceremony last week as his posthumous award was given to his wife as South African guitar superstar Jimmy Dhudlu lead artistes and other industry players from all over the continent in paying tribute to the man, who was known to many as the humble giant.
Dhudlu, who as a teenager spent 18 months living under Lee’s roof and mentorship in Swaziland, let his guitar do the talking, as the recorded speech swept through the tearful crowd.
George Lee. Ghanaian Jazz icon. |
"Are you that man who beats his wife and goes to church? Show respect…" the speech ran as the late Lee’s close friend and fellow activist, Andrea, thanked the event’s organisers for the award. She had fond memories of the veteran saxophonist, songwriter and bandleader whose imposing height and warm personality made him one of the biggest names in the continental music scene.
A few days before awards ceremony, a memorial service had been held at Houghton for the many fans that could not attend his cremation.
International career
Born Kwame Narh Kojo Larnyoh on January 8, 1938 in Ghana, Lee was raised on the swing jazz of American big bands personified by Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Louis Jordan and Duke Ellington.
So profound were his talents that his namesake, then head of state, the late Kwame Nkrumah, appointed him Ghana’s cultural emissary when he was barely 25.
As a songwriter, composer, arranger and stage director, his international career has been phenomenal. Thanks to his music’s global appeal, artists around the world, including the late South African expatriate, Chris McGregor, and the late saxophonist Mike Makhalemele, have recorded his compositions.
Despite his reputation as a jazzman, he was highly versatile; he wrote music for the South African run of a classic Wole Soyinka play, and for an award-winning stage production by Khaba Mkhize, to mention just two examples of his theatrical contributions. He even featured in the Hollywood movie A Good Man In Africa, starring Sean Connery.
His versatility shone through in his collaboration with reggae icon Bob Marley. He worked extensively with Marley as a session musician and horns arranger. He also toured with Toots & The Maytals and Johnny Nash, when the latter’s hit, I Can See Clearly Now, was topping the charts.
Since 1990 he had lived in South Africa where guitarist Dludlu, one of his die-hard music protÈgÈs joined his band, Anansi, in the late 1980s.
In South Africa he was instrumental in shaping another young jazz lion’s future, guitarist Selaelo Selota.
—Additional information from the Internet.
