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PRICE:
$24.00
IN STOCK
ARTIST
TITLE
Mbaqanga Songs
FORMAT
LP

LABEL
CATALOG #
HJR 103LP HJR 103LP
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
8/16/2024

2024 repress. Beautiful, insurgent, fabulously danceable jazz music from South Africa, flowing out of the penny-whistle kwela bands of the 1950s. (Kwela means "get moving," in Xhosa.) Bra Gwigwi played alto and clarinet alongside Hugh Masekela and Kippie Moeketsi in The Jazz Dazzlers, The Jazz Maniacs, and The Harlem Swingsters. He came to the UK from Johannesburg as an actor and clarinetist in King Kong -- a musical about a Zulu boxer -- which opened in London in February 1961. Recorded in January 1967, at Dennis Duerden's Transcription Centre, he is joined here by Dudu Pukwana, Chris McGregor, Laurie Allan, and Ronnie Beer, all from The Blue Notes. Ladbroke Grove legend, and mainstay of the London Is The Place For Me series, Coleridge Goode plays double bass. No less than sixteen shots of jubilant, jump-up mbaqanga. Check the Ethiopian vibe of "Mra" (which became core repertoire of The Brotherhood of Breath). Listen to "Nyusamkhaya," and try to get it out of your head. Impossible. Lovely notes by Steve Beresford, too.