Courtney Pine: Mandela, my inspiration

When the jazz musician Courtney Pine was invited to compose the music for a documentary on Nelson Mandela, he knew it wouldn't be easy to do justice to such an icon. But, as he tells Sholto Byrnes, it was as much an honour as a challenge

"I've always wanted to meet Nelson Mandela," says Courtney Pine. "Ever since I was nine. I used to write essays at school on how to get him out of prison. I'd love to sit down with him and have a quiet pint." Although he has never encountered the former South African president in person – the closest he's come was seeing him address a rally in Trafalgar Square – Pine, Britain's leading saxophonist and the most visible British jazz musician since the bowler-hatted Acker Bilk ruled the airwaves, was well suited to write the music for the BBC's two-part documentary on Mandela.

"I've always played the South African national anthem, or as it used to be, the ANC anthem, to close my sets. Even when I was growing up in Ladbroke Grove I had a weird knowledge of what South Africa was – a place of wrong," continues Pine. "I remember not eating South African products, not choosing them at the supermarket. It had to be done." For him, Mandela is the ultimate icon. "There was a time before he was put away that he was registered as a terrorist," he says incredulously. "I think he is a living saint. We've been trained, as Christians, to turn the other cheek, but how many cheeks does he have? When you think what he went through, why didn't he just pick up an AK? If I could learn just a bit of the nous he's got, it would help me with many things in my life."

Born in 1964, Courtney Pine came to fame in the 1980s as one of the featured stars of the Jazz Warriors. His first album, 1986's Journey to the Urge Within, entered the UK Top 40, an almost unheard of achievement for a genuine jazz album, as opposed to one of the jazz-tinged vocal confections so beloved of record companies. A master technician who has experimented with many different styles, he was offered a place in Art Blakey's great finishing- school, the Jazz Messengers, but turned it down as he wanted to stay in Britain. On occasion, he has been the subject of criticism for stepping outside of pure jazz parameters, but his acknowledged dedication to his craft has seen him through to become something of a father figure to the younger generation of British jazz musicians, and a figure of respect to all.

Writing the music for these documentaries was a different kind of project for Pine, who has been unafraid to take jazz into areas that would make purists purse their lips, such as reggae, drum'n'bass and jungle. "Normally, you have to imagine what you want to say, but here, that's been provided for you." Much of his score for the films is in the form of duets, to convey dialogues or relationships, such as that between Nelson and Winnie. Each character has a specific instrument or theme to accompany their appearance on screen.

That's not to say that he has been over-literal, though. "If the film is of someone walking along, you don't put a bass drumbeat on every footstep," explains the composer. "I've used textures, like having alto flute and bass clarinet." When he adds that much of it was computer-generated, he is at pains not to give the wrong impression. "It's not Depeche Mode – more Enya, a landscapy sound."

Pine is very familiar with the South African township jazz tradition, having worked with the trumpeter Hugh Masekela, a luminary of the scene, and having spent time with many others for whom London was a second home, including the late Dudu Pukwana and Mervyn Afrika. "Nothing of their own was supposed to survive during apartheid," says Pine. "Music would be selected by the state for Zulus or Xhosas. The musicians inverted what they felt about that repression. If you and I had been there, the music we would have produced would have been minor key and angry. They turned it round and made it happy. It's a folky, earthy sound." An exact copy of the style, however, was not what he was after. "I thought I should also represent my opinion of Mandela, show how I see him."

Pine has also been to South Africa. In fact, he was approached to write the score for the documentaries while he was in the country filming a programme for the BBC. "I was asked whether it would be possible to do the impossible for this, and of course you say, yes," says Pine, for whom the task was clearly a responsibility and one he took very seriously, but was equally one he could not turn down. "It's always hard writing music, but it's much easier when you have a subject as inspirational as Nelson Mandela. And I was very inspired to write this."

Pine feels that the project is important as a reminder of what happened in South Africa, and that those too young to remember the evil perpetrated by the Verwoerds and the Bothas should not remain in ignorance. "It was only days ago that the world allowed this to happen," he says. "Mandela knows that there is the possibility of it happening again somewhere. It's important that the story is told."

As a firm believer in the power of music to transform – he has said that "jazz can elevate people to a higher consciousness" – no composer would have been more appropriate than Pine. He happily relates an instance of music's ability to be the catalyst for events of magnitude. "I met the guy who set off the Sharpeville riots," he says. "One day, he managed to sneak in a record on to a radio station where he was a DJ. It just had the two words – "Stand Up" – and he played it once an hour. That evening, the riots started. They sent him to jail for playing that record."

Pine, often combative on stage, and especially so when addressing jazz critics, is charm itself while discussing a score evidently dear to his heart. I do hope he gets to have that pint with Mandela one day.

'Mandela: The Living Legend' will be shown in two parts, tonight and Wednesday 12 March, on BBC1 at 9pm