Music
Rebirth of Cool shakes off genre limits with their hip-hop jazz mashups
Rebirth of Cool is a super group - the brainchild of respected selectah (that's DJ, for the uncool folk) Kenzhero. Their name is a hat-tip to an extraordinary, genre-shattering musician: Miles Davis, who released Birth of the Cool in 1957.
Rebirth of Cool is also a future-forward, live music set-up, tied not to genre but to the possibilities that present themselves when restrictions and allegiances to a type of sound are discarded.
After a meeting between Kenzhero and pianist/composer Thandi Ntuli, Benjamin Jephta and Sphelelo Mazibuko were brought in on bass and drums respectively. To anyone clued up on South African jazz, these names are central to the narrative, while Kenzhero is the don dadda of this urban cool scene, from Jozi to Cape Town...
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