Schilder plays a Wikkelspies. (Tricia Tongco/Neon Tommy)

With carefully placed coasters, candles and a lace tablecloth on the dining table, the home in Fairview, South Africa, is well-kept and organized—with the exception of Hilton Schilder’s corner of the living room.

A grand piano dwarfs everything else in the space, almost touching the counter of the kitchen.

My professor Erna Smith, four USC Annenberg students and I have made this house call as part of a “jazz safari,” a loosely guided excursion to the home of the renowned South African composer and multi-instrumentalist. Schilder is mostly known as a jazz musician but has explored many genres. In the 1980s, he was a founding member of the rebel rock band The Genuines. 

It comes as no surprise that Schilder does not stick to one category of music. He plays upwards of 20 instruments. With a view from the dining table, I am convinced that most of them are hidden under and around his piano. At first glance, I spotted a teal mini synthesizer, a bongo and a rain stick.

I doubt I could even name 20 instruments, but Schilder has moved beyond your everyday guitar or drum set. The first he played for us was unrecognizable—a wooden slat with long sticks looped with wire. It was a wikkelspies, a new instrument developed just a couple years ago by Schilder’s friend, Bienjamin Petersen.

The name of the instrument literally means “shake spear,” an apt title since playing it involved gently shaking the slat with his knees as it laid in his lap and tapping the strings with chopsticks. The result is a curious, otherworldly beauty—frenetic yet gentle.

During dinner, it seemed like Schilder was most comfortable when playing music. He frequently hopped up to play songs with titles like “Email to the Ancestors” and “Tone Nails.” At one point he even took the stool he had been sitting on and began tapping on one side, revealing it to be a percussion box from Cuba.

“Each instrument has its own meaning,” he said.

Percussion was Schilder’s entryway into music at the tender age of three when he was given a drum as a gift. “I deliberately didn’t go to school for music,” he said.

Coming from four generations of musicians, Schilder is the son of the late Cape Town jazz pianist Tony Schilder, and grew up in the perfect environment to learn about music and to teach himself how to play instruments. At 53 years old, he possesses a childlike enthusiasm for his art, even beginning to spontaneously gurgle his drink during dinner to demonstrate that “music is everywhere.”

Two years ago, the musician was diagnosed with cancer. He credits his recovery to music. After dinner, we watched “Mama Goema,” a 2011 documentary about music in Cape Town that profiles different musical sounds and musicians, including Schilder. In it, he appears dangerously thin but still his happy-go-lucky self.

If Schilder represents energetic chaos, his wife, Tesna, is the order that balances him out. We enjoyed her delicious dinner of biryani, curry and salsa while Schilder performed for us.

They met when he was a teenager. Since then, he's written almost 50 songs about her.

“I’d like to have a concert with just songs for my wife… but I would have to pick only 10,” Schilder said with a smile. “We’ve been through a lot.”

Reach Staff Reporter Tricia Tongco here and follow her on Twitter.