Conviction, integrity and a healthy dose of amplification - that's the essence of Courtney Pine's music. His openness to music of all genres has helped shape a sound that's a mixture of jazz improvisation and hip hop, r'n'b, soul, world beat and turntable scratches. It's a vivid musical mix, a yellow-brick road into the hearts of an audience that extends well beyond the traditional jazz constituency: "That's something jazz critics hate," he laughs, relaxing backstage after a concert, "but if you go back to the tradition of Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet, this what they are doing, every note was for the audience to react to.

"They wanted to play notes that made people move, and that's what I'm trying to do."

Twenty minutes before, he had brought a huge crowd to its feet. At the end of his set he called up the spirits: "Louis Armstrong," he cried. The crowd roared its approval. "Charlie Parker." More roars of approval. "L-e-s-te-r Young!!" Even more roars. "JOHN COLTRANE!" The crowd went mad. "Is everybody happy???" Pine demanded. "Yeah," came the reply.

"I said IS EVERYBODY HAPPY???" "YEEEEAH!" A response like that left no doubt Pine is loved by audiences in a way few jazz musicians are today.

But his current tour-schedule supporting his new album, Back In The Day, (released on Blue Thumb) is just one aspect of his fast-moving career. Still in his thirties, he was recently awarded an OBE for his ground-breaking contributions to jazz and jazz education and his positive impact on young black musicians world-wide.

Currently, he's host to Courtney Pine's Jazz Crusade on Monday nights on BBC Radio 2, a programme that seeks to reach beyond the converted and show how accessible jazz can be to young audiences. And on Thursday, he appears in another guise, as presenter of a fascinating BBC 2 documentary, Bands Apart, that explores Black South African music during the apartheid years.

Pine is no stranger to South Africa; he has played concerts there since independence, but the black music scene during apartheid was something he knew nothing about. So he set out, as he as put it, to examine "a secret chapter in South Africa's musical history, the story of a remarkable archive of black music that has lain hidden for years". It is really the story of a radio station. Back in apartheid's pre-television days Radio Bantu was listened to by almost the entire black population of South Africa, which bought cheap FM transistor radios made available for them by the government. (The radios, surprise, surprise, could not pick up the short wave broadcasts of the ANC in exile.) Under the guise of preserving African cultural traditions, Radio Bantu was an instrument of apartheid. Leaving aside the more obvious propaganda it pumped out - "Bring me any other country in the world where four million whites done so much for 16 million blacks" - the radio fostered a belief in separateness, a key element in apartheid's grand design. Under apartheid, the blacks were to be given their "Homelands" and told to get on with it, while the whites got on with their thing - principally making money - without having to worry about such details as providing schools, hospitals, roads and running water for the black population.

In Bands Apart, the former head of Radio Bantu, Steve De Villiers, calmly rationalises its role within the apparatus of apartheid by saying the station was modelled carefully on the BBC: "Lord Reith of the BBC gave us exactly how it operated," he purrs. Which is about as disingenuous as you can get.

In any case, Reithism meant preventing radio being used as an instrument of mass culture by keeping broadcasting in "cultured hands". Radio Bantu's aim was the reverse; its appeal sought out the mass market, 16 million blacks, on which to work its propaganda.

The person who decided what black music went out on the air and what didn't was a formidable former music teacher, Dr Yvonne Huskisson, who toured extensively, making field recordings as well as bringing all manner of groups into the studios to record. "I really got the music side of Radio Bantu going," she tells Pine.

Radio Bantu's outwardly egalitarian face - indigenous black music for black audiences - did not fool the black public. "They were saying they were preserving our culture," says Abigail, a black housewife. "In the end they were dividing us."

It is really music historian Rob Allingham who puts the pieces together. From the Radio Bantu archives he produces a jazz LP of Dorsey Brothers material from the early 1930s. One track has been mutilated by a knife to prevent anybody on the station broadcasting it. It's the old jazz standard Basin Street Blues. The reason? Because the lyrics say Basin Street was the street "where the dark and white folks meet".

Pine interviews several musicians such as Stanley Nkosi, who brought his vocal group into the studio; they were awed by the microphone, particularly when they were told it "captures your voices". Nkosi's group would later find world-wide fame as Ladysmith Black Mambazo. And here lies a great irony about the music which originated under apartheid. It was, according to trumpeter Hugh Masekela, more creative than black South African music today.

In asserting their cultural identity through music, apartheid seemed to provide the inspiration needed for musicians to reach into the hearts of the subjugated black population. But now, after independence, this highly creative black music scene has, by this account, dissipated. It's a poignant tale.

BACK in Britain, Courtney Pine's busy schedule continues unabated. The response to his latest gig has left him elated. Cultural identity is important, he says. It's what his new album Back In The Day is about: "I come from a sound-system background from Jamaica, so all this stuff, Ska, Reggae, these big boxes, these parties, that's my background. I've got to look into who I am. We British jazz musicians have decided to take our own route, different to American jazz, through the music called drum'n'bass. There's a whole MP3 thing going on, the Internet, it's starting to make us think laterally. When I first mixed jazz and beats I thought audiences were going to walk out; this music is over young kids' heads. When I opened my eyes they were still there and cheering. So it showed me that if the vibe is right I can reach anybody, whether they've heard of Charlie Parker or Lester Young or not."

Bands Apart opens the Black Britain season on BBC2 on Thursday. Pine's latest album, Back In The Day has just been released on the Blue Thumb label. He plays at the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival on Saturday, October 28th, 8 p.m. Booking on: 021- 4270022