[2] Being born in a similar political climate to that in New Orleans, Louisiana, at the end of the 19th century, the blues songs that inspired this genre told of local occurrences in Cape Town.
An example is the inspiration of the visits of the southern confederate raider CSS Alabama to the Cape in 1863 and 1864, resulting in the folk song "Daar kom die Alibama".
These three, together with bassist Paul Michaels, drummer the late Monty Weber and sax man Morris Goldberg, recorded the seminal Cape jazz song "Mannenberg".
The performers, known as Klopse, borrowed the painted faces and bright consumes of the minstrel show style of New Orleans and combined this with African and European music that was to be heard in the taverns and night clubs of the port city.
Some of this music is also more recently known as Goema, or Ghoema jazz (also written "guma" – Jonas Gwangwa), referring to a particular wooden barrel-shaped Asian-style drum (also known in the Cape as a Ghomma) played by the revelers in the almost totally creole troupes in the aforementioned parade.
The young Van Heerden was killed in a motor accident in 2009, but not before releasing two very modern albums of his own, inspired by this genre and his time spent under Robbie Jansen's teaching.
Other leading names in the genre are pianist Tony Schilder, guitarist Errol Dyers, bass player and composer Stephen Erasmus and the Gugulethu-based saxophonist the late Winston Mankunku.
An international breakthrough for the genre came when a compilation of recordings entitled Cape Jazz 3 - Goema entered the prestige European World Music Charts in May 2008.
A new name in the genre is the young pianist Kyle Shepherd, a student of the late Robbie Jansen and past member of Jack Momple's ensemble, who issued three solo albums with very strong roots material in 2008, 2010 and 2012.