SWINGING SOUNDS FROM SOUTH AFRICA

There is a poignancy about the South African music scene now. "Go to the jazz brunch at Winchester Mansions, in Cape Town; it has a lovely New Orleans atmosphere," said Don Albert, veteran jazz musician, when I was there in crisp, joyous July days. "Let's go to Marco's African Place—it's so laid-back it's like New Orleans," said Sam Woulidge, editor of Cape Town's entertainment bible, Time Out. In Johannesburg, chilling to the beat in the lounge bar of the Grillhouse, socialite and interior designer Julia Twigg said to me, "This is how I imagine New Orleans." Within weeks New Orleans became how one imagines an African township.

Nothing reflects the modern South Africa as vividly as its social whirl: the cool restaurants, the hip bars, and the vibrant music. Just 1 1 years ago, before the end of apartheid, one wouldn't have dreamed of braving downtown Cape Town. Now I've had an epiphany in Marco's while eating crocodile carpaccio: I want to have a big bottom. Onstage three glorious black women are shaking their booties to seductive, slow, repetitive jazz strummed by a band that is exactly as a jazz band should be—majestically shambolic. The women have perfect rhythm, legs that could kick-start a jumbo 747, and superb curves; I feel like a pallid stick insect. Suddenly everyone is dancing, black and white, children, guys who look like city bankers, moms. We are singing and dancing to a backbeat arrangement of the national anthem. It is pure energy.

Marimba is slick urban, the Armanisuited crowd smoking Cuban cigars, drinking malt whiskey. It's fusion food and fusion music: blues, Latino, swing, and ambient jazz. Every night of the week the joint is jumping. Time to mellow is at the Sunday brunch at the Winchester Mansions in Sea Point, Cape Town's Santa Monica. A jazz band plays smoky tunes in the interior courtyard fringed with fretwork balconies, leafy palms, and tinkling water. Built in the 20s, it is whitepainted and shady; people laze, drinking champagne and reading the newspapers. There are eggs every which way, roasts and salads, piles of tropical fruits, fresh-baked breads, and chocolate cake. It reminded me of Scarlett O'Hara's New Orleans honeymoon with Rhett Butler, when she ate every passing delicacy with abandon so she'd never be hungry again.

Cape Town is laid-back. Johannesburg is edgy. It's utterly intriguing, growing so fast from frontier town to African Manhattan that you can virtually see speed marks; a glitzy CD launch at the Bassline, the city's jazz central, was light-years on from township music or the Cape African jazz of the 50s aping Satchmo and Ellington. Names to drop for today's jazz cred are trumpeter Marcus Wyatt, bassist Concord Nlcabinde—who's translated the lyrics of "Summertime" into Zulu for a Soweto String Quartet CD—and, always the classic, Abdullah Ibrahim. I dined on one of the world's best steaks in the Grillhouse, which has the stylish atmosphere of New York's '21' Club, with Don Albert. Once, he was threatened with jail for trying to get the law changed so black artists could perform in white-licensed premises such as this. The law was later rescinded. "To have done that for black people during the apartheid era was the greatest thing I have ever done," he says. After dinner we listened to the music in the bar, along with cool youth, black and white, drinking the fine wines of their country. Everyone rushes through South Africa's cities

to the bush, to the wine country. Stay awhile— get under the skin of the country that's given us Charlize Theron. This visit I went small: I stayed at boutique hotels with a sense of place. Ten Bompas, in a leafy, smart Jo'burg suburb, has just 10 suites—each with a wood-burning fireplace and effortless WiFi—a superb restaurant, and a front desk full of great knowledge of the local scene. Every morning at little Kensington Place, in Cape Town, I drew my curtains and Table Mountain was glittering in the sun above my balcony. In the evening there was champagne and oysters in the bar. When I left, the staff hugged me. That would reinforce Blanche DuBois's belief in the kindness of strangers.

VICTORIA MATHER