Bassline in the '90s: a space for good music and a melting pot of ideas

By the  time I first entered the smoke-filled hole-in-the-wall on Seventh Avenue that was the Bassline, it was half-way through its tenure as the home of Johannesburg's bohemian intelligentsia and jazz aficionados.

That mix of exiles, writers, musicians and music lovers, many of whom had started having heated conversations about the future of the country back in the 1990s on the streets of Yeoville, had now migrated to the once sleepy, predominantly Afrikaans suburb of Melville, where the conversations continued and the music and the booze flowed under the darting eyes of gregarious Bassline owner Brad Holmes.

For those who walked through its doors it's hard to forget just how unique and influential a space it was in the early days of democratic South Africa.

Started by Krugersdorp-born Holmes, a waiter returned from years lived overseas in an effort to avoid military conscription, the Bassline during its 10-year tenancy in Melville became a multiracial, liberated space for South Africans from all walks to get to know one another and the music it celebrated as the infectious, ever-surprising soundtrack to the heady days of the Mandela era.

Anthropologist, writer, musician and Bassline regular David Coplan has written a thoroughly engaging account of how Holmes, the times and the place came together to create a space that quickly stamped its mark on Johannesburg, the country and eventually the jazz world at large for the brief decade that many felt would never end.

Here, brought to life by Coplan and the photographs of Melville stalwart and music photographer extraordinaire Óscar Gutiérrez, the spirits of too-soon-gone legends like Moses Molelekwa, Sipho Gumede, Allen Kwela, Gito Baloi, Bheki Mseleku, Dorothy Rathebe and others are resurrected for a brief moment that reminds us of their enormous contributions to the shape of jazz currently and South African music in general

This is thanks in no small part to their appearances on the crowded stage of the converted shop squeezed between Second and Third avenues on the Melville strip.

Although Coplan, as with all true jazz heads, can't resist occasional digressions into the technical aspects of some of his heroes, there are enough amusing anecdotes of the eccentricities of the cast to maintain a balance which will keep non-jazz devotees turning the pages.

If you were there, it's a book that's a bittersweet reminder of a recent past that already seems so long ago and full of inspiring characters who are sadly no longer with us.

If you weren't, it's a sometimes envy-inducing description of a time, place and people who we'd all still rather be.

It wasn't the first place to begin to bring South Africans together, and it was not the only one of its time and it won't be the last.

If there's any lesson to be learnt from the story of the Bassline, it's that in difficult times South Africans have an enormous capacity to figure things out together over a few glasses of whisky to the accompaniment of good music - that's a skill worth preserving, come what may, for to quote the club's slogan, "in music we trust", even when we can't trust much else.

• Last Night at the Bassline by David B Coplan and Óscar Gutiérrez is published by Jacana. Costs R280.

• This article was originally published in The Times.