‘Pops’ Mohamed (1949-2025): South African musician defied the bounds of genre, instruments and race

Ismail Mohamed-Jan – better known by South African jazz fans as Pops Mohamed – has passed away at the age of 75. His life in music represented a struggle against narrow, oppressive definitions – of race, instrumental appropriateness and musical genre.

A few days before his death, a remastered version of his 2006 album Kalamazoo, Vol. 5 (A Dedication to Sipho Gumede) had been released on digital platforms ahead of an official launch.

Mohamed was born on December 10, 1949 in the working-class gold-mining town of Benoni in South Africa. By his mid-teens, the Group Areas Act – which divided urban areas into racially segregated zones during apartheid – had forced his family to move to Reiger Park (then called Stertonville).

The suburb was allocated to residents of mixed heritage: Mohamed’s father had Indian and Portuguese ancestry; his mother, Xhosa and Khoisan forebears.

Influences

Significantly for his musical development, Reiger Park was a stone’s throw from the Black residential area of Vosloorus and the remnants of the historic informal settlement of Kalamazoo, where people of all racial classifications had lived side by side. He told me in a radio interview about travelling in the area with his father: “I used to witness migrant workers from the East Rand Property Mines coming with traditional instruments to the shebeens (taverns) and playing their...

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