Jazz Against Apartheid’s main aim is what Germans call NACHWUCHSFORDERUNG. What is that? It is a nationally recognised tradition and policy by which knowledge and skills are purposefully transferred from the current generation to the next. In this context the veteran Jazz musicians hold capacity building and training jazz workshops directed at interested and upcoming youth from the townships.

JAA is a free association of people dedicated to the cause of freedom. The world was united in solidarity and responsibility to bring changes. Music and its message of liberation was the possibility of individual and collective freedom. The politically and culturally achievements of exiled South African jazz musicians together with the supportive creative and collaborative German and international jazz musicians is valuable insight and opportunities.

That these musicians continue to come together to share, inspire and create a fresh collaborative musical experience through workshops and events at the community centres of undeserved communities is a testimony in and of itself.

The workshop event unites these old fighters for elementary freedoms with new and future generations, thus bridging the gap between geography and history. Creative students and scholars from communities as well as jazz schools, are given the wonderful opportunity for a dedicated workshop and master-class.

Workshops serve to make an essential aspect of the buried cultural heritage accessible to a young generation of professional jazz musicians who have grown up in the post-Apartheid society.