319: London Zulu, by Doreen Thobekile

Doreen Thobekile (South Africa)
London Zulu (2005)
9 tracks, 50 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

This album is London Zulu, and so was Doreen Thobekile. She worked with many artists of all different styles while living in London since the 1970s, all while keeping her Zulu roots very much alive. This was her debut solo album, and she made it aged 60.

In many ways you could think of this as a Transglobal Underground album: Tim Whelan and Hamid Mantu provide the production, most of the musical backing and Sheema Mukherjee gets a couple of guest slots on sitar and bass too. The approach is very much TGU-like and fans of that outfit will of course love this one as well.

But that is not to diminish Doreen’s all-important place on the album at all. The whole thing really does revolve around her. As well as her striking vocals, she also plays the concertina, mouth harp, musical bow and mbira, and the tracks are just as often based around the elements of maskandi or mbaqanga as they are electronica. It’s actually super interesting to hear how Doreen works with TGU: where the group’s music travels to every cultural corner of the world without stopping, Doreen’s influence takes that adventurousness but focuses it like a magnifying glass, concentrating it specifically to work for her own style.

I need to make a quick diversion here to talk about one particular highlight of this album. The track ‘Umhlahlo’ has at its foundations a short sample of Ravel’s ‘String Quartet in F major’, and it’s one the funkiest uses of classical music that I can think of – it’s tied in first place with Busdriver’s ‘Imaginary Places’ with its use of Bach’s ‘Badinerie’. So if you’re in a hurry and you need to get a feel for the album in one song, now you know where to turn.

London Zulu – in its resulting sound as well as its perfectly succinct title and powerful cover art – really reflects who Doreen was: deeply cosmopolitan, unmistakably South African and always both at all times. It’s heavy at times and a joyous party throughout. Doreen left us in 2010 but the spirit and musical philosophy of London Zulu continues in the work of her daughter, Ingrid Webster, who performs this music and more almost every month in London, proving that it’s far more important than just a funky record – it’s a legacy.

290: Introducing Shiyani Ngcobo, by Shiyani Ngcobo

Shiyani Ngcobo (South Africa)
Introducing Shiyani Ngcobo (2004)
14 tracks, 60 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Maskanda (or maskandi) is Zulu music of the travelling bard. At its origins, it is the perfect mobile music: its steady beat is at walking pace, and the solo musician (traditionally male) accompanies their quick-fire poetry on guitar, concertina or fiddle. Its usual comparison is as ‘the Zulu blues,’ but while the lyrics indeed talk of the struggles of an itinerant lifestyle, its perked-up playing style makes it more akin to country music to my own ears. Where 21st-century maskanda is more likely to sound like a generic pop style, complete with huge synthetic backings and various influences from hip-hop to reggae, Shiyani Ngcobo was a powerful force for preserving the original flavour of this unmistakable sound.

Introducing Shiyani Ngcobo was the only full-length album he made before his death in 2011, but it could just as easily be called Introducing Maskanda. He was known to brag about being a master of ‘eight to nine’ different maskanda sub-styles (which vary by region and dance style), and he shows off many of them here. In the traditional mould, Ngcobo is a guitarist and singer. His voice is a compelling mixture of sweet and sandpaper, both warm and welcoming while still being quite high-pitched and scratchy. It’s his guitar playing that sends me reeling. Maskanda traditionally starts with a short section on which the musician shows off their instrumental chops, and it does a great job of drawing the listener in. There’s always at least two things going on with Ngcobo’s guitar at once – one second he will be playing a melody to a rhythmic drone, the next he will be playing two melodies in harmony, and the next he will be playing melody on the high strings and a bass part on the low, and he switches all these up any-which-way before settling into a circular riff that incorporates all these techniques and which serves as the basis to his singing. It’s mighty impressive – especially when you bear in mind that some of the tracks are recorded on a homemade igogogo guitar, a five-string instrument built out of an oil-can and (if my ear doesn’t fool me) doesn’t have any frets.

The solo tracks (such as ‘Sevelina’) are my favourites from this album, but the ones with his ensemble ain’t half bad either. It variously includes fiddles, whistles, concertinas and a second guitar, but most importantly an electric bass guitar, from Aaron Meyiwa, which plays a valuable role as yet another interlocking melody alongside Ngcobo’s guitar. Then things can change up completely, such as in the track ‘Ijadu’ which is a cappella save for a simple shaker, the group’s four voices blending in a really lovely and pleasing manner that still rings with all of the maskanda groove as the rest of them.

Shiyani Ngcobo was one of the last champions of the acoustic style of maskanda in both senses of the word. Acoustic maskanda does still exist on its own and blended into the modern electric styles, but there is none as versatile and virtuosic as Ngcobo – this album is a fantastic run down of just what he was capable of.

209: Jazz Epistle Verse 1, by The Jazz Epistles

The Jazz Epistles (South Africa)
Jazz Epistle Verse 1 (1960)
8 tracks, 43 minutes
Only the so-called ‘complete’ collected recordings of the Jazz Epistles is available online, which can be found here: Spotify ∙ iTunes. They’re actually not complete though, as they lack the track ‘I Remember Billy’ from this album – you can listen to it here.

The Jazz Epistles are considered to be the first ‘progressive jazz’ group in South Africa. While there had been jazz and jazz-influenced styles played in the country for a few decades, the Jazz Epistles were the first coherent group to work in the small-band style of the bebop and post-bop idioms as opposed to the big band of swing or the solo piano of ragtime.

If there’s such thing as a pre-supergroup, then the Jazz Epistles would fit that billing. Of the six bandmembers, at least three of them were or became South African jazz legends. First there's alto saxophonist Kippie Moeketsi, who was already a popular name in South African jazz as the leader of marabi band the Jazz Dazzlers, and then there's Kippie’s protégés, Hugh Masekela on trumpet and Dollar Brand on piano. The Epistles’ sessions were the first time either of these musicians had been recorded, and both went on to be huge international stars in the worlds of jazz and beyond (Dollar Brand eventually becoming known as Abdullah Ibrahim). The remaining three of Jonas Gwangwa (trombone), Johnny Gertze (double bass) and Makaya Ntshako (drums) went on to become valuable members of Masekela’s and Ibrahim’s bands, even if they never made the leap to bandleaders themselves.

Recorded in the epochal year of 1959, Jazz Epistle Verse 1 – the only album recorded by the group – is very much characteristic of a late-50s American jazz record, with its mix of blueses, bops and ballads. In fact, the music here is virtually indistinguishable as South African as opposed to American, although maybe there is a slightest hint in Ibrahim’s piano playing on his own compositions of ‘Uku-Jonga Phambili’ and ‘Gafsa’. Nevertheless, even without a unique flavour of the band’s heritage, the music is very accomplished, especially being the first of its kind in the country. Even at this point, the players’ personalities are strong: Moeketsi’s style is more that of the old fashioned bebop, Ibrahim’s a much further-forward take including super-extended chords and unusual progressions, and Masekela’s flits between the two but mostly settles in the post-bop realm.

Perhaps Jazz Epistle Verse 1 is not the most groundbreaking record in the history of jazz, but it’s certainly an important milestone in the evolution of South African popular music, made even more interesting for its recording debuts of two of the country’s most successful ever musicians.

062: Shangaan Electro: New Wave Dance Music from South Africa, by Various Artists

Various Artists (South Africa)
Shangaan Electro: New Wave Dance Music from South Africa (2010)
12 tracks, 65 minutes
Spotify • iTunes

Despite how I love so much of the music from the African continent, I have a hard time with South African music. I do try, but a lot of it just doesn’t hit my ears right. I find a lot of it to be just a bit too fluffy – I don’t know why and I can’t even really define what I mean by ‘fluffy.’ It's something to do with the way the melodies and harmonies are constructed that just doesn’t work for me. Entirely my problem, of course, there’s nothing about South African music that’s bad in general, I’m just weird like that. So when I find music from South Africa that hits me right, I’m always stoked to dive in; I feel like that about Shangaan Electro.

Shangaan Electro is a scene that revolves around the Limpopo region of South Africa, but it’s spread all over the country. The style is named after the Shangaan people of that region and the music and dance is inspired by their traditional culture. In the Electro version, though, everything is pushed to 11: where Shangaan music is fast, Shangaan Electro is faster; where Shangaan dances are energetic, Shangaan Electro dances are frenetic and completely wild.

It’s all based around drum machines and synthesisers with a range of brilliantly tacky timbres. There’s a particular focus on marimba sounds that hark back to the traditional styles, and the vocals over the top of it all can reflect anything from traditional song to soul, R’n’B and hip-hop. Every track has those short, circular melodies and heavy drum patterns that I seem to love so much, the ones that feel like they could go on for hours. It reminds me quite a bit of mchiriku music from Tanzania, like we heard from Jagwa Music in January – the aesthetics are similar but they’re approached from a different sort of direction, and there’s a little more of a conscious production element with Shangaan Electro. Every aspect of the music is precision engineered to make it the danciest possible, and personally I find it wonderful to exercise to, for the same reason – it never stops, so you don’t want to either.

I know I’ve not really talked about this album in particular, but that's a testament to it. Released on the Honest Jon’s label, the album is a compilation of Shangaan Electro hits, and it was the first time the style got any real exposure in Europe. It’s basically a sampler, a who’s-who of the stars of the genre. The compilers did a great job at introducing the style and its different facets in one succinct album, and it really makes you feel clued-in in just over an hour, simply by listening. So if what I wrote up there sounds at all interesting to you, let this album be your first port-of-call.