Collection: Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand)

Dollar Brand left South Africa in 1962 as the apartheid government tightened its grip on Black cultural life, and the records he made in the years that followed carried the sound of Cape Town with him into Switzerland, New York, and across the major European festivals. His grandmother had been the pianist for the local AME church in Cape Town; his mother led the choir; and the music he eventually built, rooted in Khoi-san songs, Cape Malay rhythms, gospel, and the jazz of Monk and Ellington, was shaped by all of it. Duke Ellington heard the Dollar Brand Trio playing at the Africana Club in Zurich in February 1963 and arranged a Reprise recording session, producing the album that introduced the pianist to an international audience. By the time Brand settled in New York in 1965, he had already developed a piano style that sat outside any single tradition. He converted to Islam in 1968, took the name Abdullah Ibrahim, and in 1974 recorded "Mannenberg" in Cape Town, a piece that became the unofficial anthem of the anti-apartheid movement. His long association with Enja Records, running from the early 1970s through the following decades, produced the bulk of the catalogue collectors seek out today.