The Story of Ramon Alexander

Roots in Mamre

Roots in Mamre

Ramon was born and raised in Mamre, a historic Moravian mission settlement near Cape Town, once known as Groenekloof. His parents were both teachers — his mother taught English, his father Geography. When they divorced, Ramon moved to Mossel Bay to live with his eldest sister and her husband.

His earliest musical influences were the ones around him: the Moravian brass-band hymn tradition of the church, and the surviving Khoisan musical legacy of the Mamre and Groenekloof area. That deep sense of place — of heritage carried in sound — would later become the core of his compositions.

First notes

First notes

Ramon began playing piano around the age of five, imitating his elder brother's lessons; that same brother played trumpet in the church band. He took his first formal, classical piano lessons at age ten in Mossel Bay, attending All Saints Primary School there and later York High School in George.

Jazz arrived at fifteen. His brother took him to the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown (now Makhanda), where he encountered the Cuban band Como No — the moment jazz took hold.

The winemaking turn

The winemaking turn

After matriculating in 1998, Ramon took a gap year and studied jazz piano under Merton Barrow at The Jazz Workshop in Cape Town, then widely regarded as the city's foremost jazz teacher.

He then won a South African Airways (SAA) bursary and enrolled at Stellenbosch University, graduating in 2004 with a B.Sc. (Agriculture) in Viticulture and Oenology — he trained, in other words, as a winemaker. By his own account, he realised during his studies that winemaking would not be his career. But the discipline left its mark: he has spoken about how the idea of "balance" in winemaking shapes the way he composes.

The idea of "balance" in winemaking shapes the way Ramon composes.

Carrying the baton

Carrying the baton

Ramon describes his musical lineage as a baton passed to him by the founding generation of Cape Jazz — Robbie Jansen, Mac McKenzie, Merton Barrow, Winston Mankunku (Mankunku Ngozi), Basil Coetzee and Ibrahim Khalil Shihab — with Abdullah Ibrahim, the "father of Cape Jazz," as a foundational influence.

That inheritance is more than sentiment. Ramon is a serious scholar of goema — the rhythm at the heart of Cape Jazz, rooted in Cape Malay, Khoi and District Six musical traditions — and he treats the history of the music with academic seriousness alongside his life as a performer.

Composer of place

Composer of place

Ramon emerged as a composer early. While studying at Stellenbosch he formed the band ESP with fellow students, playing festivals and functions; by the time ESP recorded, seven of the album's twelve tracks were his own compositions. In 2004 he was also selected as pianist for the Standard Bank National Youth Big Band.

His solo work draws directly on his heritage. His second solo album, Echoes from Louwskloof (2015), is an homage both to his musical forefathers and to the history of Mamre — its title references Louwskloof, near Mamre, historically linked to the Khoi leader Klapmuts and his people, and the track "Louwskloof se Mense" reflects that story. The album led to his first appearance at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival in 2016.

Educator and mentor

Educator and mentor

Ramon's path into teaching began after graduation. Spotted by Felicia Lesch at the Stellenbosch University Music Department, he was recruited to teach introductory jazz theory and jazz piano in the university's Music Certificate Programme, where he lectured part-time for eight years.

He now heads the jazz division at Stellenbosch University's Music Department, where he continues to lecture in Jazz Studies.

Beyond the university, he regularly conducts jazz ensemble workshops for youth bands across the Western Cape, served on the National Youth Jazz Festival's selection panel for the National Youth Band in 2024, and has been recognised for his contribution to youth and music education.

In June 2026 Ramon was musical director of the Abdullah Ibrahim Memorial Concert at the Artscape Opera House in Cape Town — the tribute to the musician he has long named as the father of Cape Jazz, and among the clearest signs yet of the baton he describes being handed on.

That teaching work is not confined to the university term. Ramon takes masterclasses, lectures and ensemble coaching to institutions, festivals and youth programmes — and welcomes exchange collaborations with music departments abroad, carrying the goema and Cape Jazz repertoire to students who rarely hear it taught first-hand.

That has already reached beyond South Africa. In December 2023, at the invitation of Prof. h.c. Martin Zenker of the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München, Ramon toured Germany and Belgium — Munich, Brussels, Steinhöring, Reutlingen, Kempten and Mannheim — with the Goethe-Institut supporting the international travel. Alongside the concerts came days of meetings in Munich, and out of the visit Stellenbosch University's conservatoire and the Munich academy signed a Memorandum of Understanding — turning a tour into a standing partnership between the two schools.