Abdullah Ibrahim was born in Cape Town in 1934 . Before his conversion to Islam in 1968 , he was known as " Dollar Brand " . He had a mixed racial heritage , making him a Coloured person according to the South African government . His mother played piano in a church and the style of the hymnal music she played would remain an influence on Ibrahim . In addition , he learned to play several genres of music during his youth in Cape Town , including '' marabi '' , '' mbaqanga '' , and American jazz . He became well known in jazz circles in Cape Town and Johannesburg , and in 1959 , along with Kippie Moeketsi , Hugh Masekela , Jonas Gwangwa , Johnny Gertze , and Makaya Ntshoko , formed the mixed-race group The Jazz Epistles . Although the group avoided explicitly political activity , the apartheid government was suspicious of it and other jazz groups , and targeted them heavily during the increase in state repression following the Sharpeville massacre . The Epistles broke up , and in 1962 Ibrahim went into exile . In the 1960s and 70s , Ibrahim and his wife Sathima Bea Benjamin largely lived in exile in Europe and the United States , returning to South Africa only for brief periods of time . He lived for a while in New York City , playing with the band of Duke Ellington and learning composition at the Juilliard School of Music . As the Black Power movement developed in the 1960s and 1970s , it influenced a number of Ibrahim 's friends and collaborators , who began to see their music as a form of cultural nationalism . Ibrahim in turn began to incorporate African elements into his jazz
Sharpeville massacre
Sharpeville massacre
Mannenberg