A gig in South Africa

MILTON -- English is one of 11 official languages of the Republic of South Africa, so communication shouldn't be an issue for American visitors.

Jazz musicians speak a language all their own, anyway, and after the greetings are over, Bob Sinicrope figures, his Milton Academy students will have no problems speaking with the musicians they will be jamming with in South Africa next month. "When you get people playing music together, everything else melts away," said Sinicrope, who founded Milton Academy's jazz education program more than 30 years ago.

The March trip will mark the sixth time he has taken jazz students from Milton Academy to South Africa. It will be his eighth visit to the country, which freed itself from the last vestiges of apartheid in 1994.

There will be 30 students in the group of 43 that will leave from Logan Airport on March 8, after a farewell concert at 2:30 p.m. March 4 at the Real Deal Jazz Club & Cafe in Cambridge.

These have been heady days for the Milton Academy Jazz Ensemble, which performed at the inaugural gala for Governor Deval Patrick of Milton, a 1974 graduate of the school. Sinicrope taught pre calculus to the governor when he was a student, and the jazz group has performed for Patrick at various parties and fund-raisers.

The group also has performed twice at the White House for the Clintons; at the North Sea, Fribourg, Viennes, and Montreux jazz festivals; and in local jazz clubs. Milton's jazz players won Down Beat magazine's award for best high school combo in the country in 1992 and 1999.

While in South Africa, the students will jam with Johnny Mekoa's Music Academy of Gauteng, Darius Brubeck and his students at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, the Sinikthemba Choir, and students at the Amy Biehl Foundation School. Brubeck is the son of jazz icon and famed pianist Dave Brubeck.

Sinicrope's special connections with South Africa have evolved since 1991, when musician Abdullah Ibrahim visited Milton Academy and invited the combo to tour South Africa.

While in South Africa next month, the students will travel to townships where Sinicrope has built relationships on earlier trips, contacts that have allowed the students to travel safely and easily in the past.

The trip is an expensive proposition, said Sinicrope, "so when we're not rehearsing, we've been busy raising money to support some of the students for whom the cost is a burden."

Sinicrope, 57, described in a 2003 Globe story as "the Mr. Chips of jazz," founded the academy's jazz program in 1974. He said he didn't really know what he was doing at the beginning, but "I'm a better teacher each year."

That has not gone unrecognized by his peers. On Jan. 10, the International Association of Jazz Educators, in ceremonies at the Hilton New York, presented Sinicrope with the first John LaPortia Award, named for a late pioneer in jazz education at the Berklee College of Music and a former teacher of Sinicrope's.

Justin Kahn of Seekonk, a senior who plays guitar and percussion , will be making his second trip to South Africa, this time accompanied by his parents and younger sister. He remembers the beauty of a country where "one day, we would go on these incredible game drives, seeing lions go after wildebeasts and giraffes scuffle with zebras, and things like that. A few days later, we would go on walking tours of townships and meet artisans who still live on Nelson Mandela's street," Kahn said.

Kahn said South Africa is still troubled by issues of race and class, just as the United States is, and South Africa, along with many other African countries, has also been devastated by AIDS. One of the groups they will be jamming with at the University of Natal in Durban is the Sinikthemba Choir, whose members are all HIV-positive.

Zubin Thomas of Easton, a senior who plays drums, will be going to South Africa for the first time. "The other students have told me it's amazing," he said .

Rich Fahey can be reached at faheywrite@yahoo.com.