The triumphant return of Dog — king of Shangaan electro.

Olima Anditi is a blind guitarist beloved throughout Western Kenya for his old Luo songs about love, morality and politics. This warmly intimate session was recorded in his room in Kisumu, in 2010. Like Usiende Ukualale, it’s lovingly presented, with a colour booklet.

Opening in 1973, tucked into a tangle of railway parts scattered across an industrial park at the western edge of Orlando East, Club Pelican was Soweto’s first night-club, and its premier live music venue throughout the seventies.
Pretty much everyone on the scene passed through its doors — to sing, or perform in the house band, or hang out. Schooled in standards, and fluent in the local musical vernacular, the music would take off in different directions at a moment’s notice — SA twists on jazz, funk, fusion, disco — spurred by the sounds coming in from Philadelphia, Detroit and New York City.
One Night In Pelican encapsulates these halcyon times, with a musical roll call of all the key groups and players, besides evocative, previously-unseen photographs, cover artwork by Zulu ‘Batsumi’ Bidi, and notes by Kwanele Sosibo, lit up by a gallery of first-person testimony.

Militant jazz, fusion, funk and soul from mid-seventies Manenberg, outside Cape Town, with a set of roots in club dance traditions like ballroom (‘langarm’), Khoisan hop-step and the whirling ‘tickey draai’ (‘spin on a sixpence’) of the mine camps; others in jazz-rock and the New Thing.

No-shame housey Tsonga-disco and hands-in-the-air rave banged out on Korgs and Ataris in 1994 South Africa. It sold tons, rocking stadiums from Liberia and Sierra Leone to Namibia and Mozambique.

Mid-nineties kwaito by Thami Mdluli (veteran of chart-toppers Taboo and CJB, and in-demand producer of the likes of Sox and Sensations).
Tasty, infectious rhythms and synth-work — if the singing is a bit Black Box — with an up-for-it, DIY energy and self-identity encouraged by the momentum of the liberation struggle in this period. “Once Mandela was released from prison and people felt more free to express themselves and move around town, kwaito was becoming the thing,” says Thami.

An insurgent blend of rock, rumba, soul and traditional grooves.
Including never-before-released recordings by legends like Thomas Mapfumo and Oliver
Mtukudzi, amongst many others.

Joyful rug-cutters and sweet soul-uplifters from the town of Morogoro, in early-1960s Tanzania: muziki wa dansi, inspired by Cuban 78s, and dance crazes like the twist and cha cha cha, but making them its own. Here is the cream of over a hundred recordings by Salum, mostly for Mzuri Records of Kenya; pretty much lost till now.
In an old-school tip-on cover, with lyrics in Swahili and English on the inner sleeve.
Lovely stuff.

An astounding compilation of the breakneck Shangaan dance output of the Nozinja studio in Soweto, recorded between 2006 and 2009.

The second half of the CD.

‘At a distance of more than forty years, the radicalism and significance of African Spaces can be seen more clearly. Ambitious, uncompromising, and resolutely progressive, it represents a unique high-water mark in South Africa’s long musical engagement with the newest developments in American jazz — a response to the cosmic call of Return To Forever, and an answer to Miles’ On The Corner… a complex and challenging jazz fusion that shifted the terms of South Africa’s engagement with jazz towards new music being made by pioneers such as Chick Corea, Weather Report, John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny and others.
‘This debut recording is one of the key documents in the South African jazz canon. Emerging in the aftermath of the 1976 Soweto uprising, and taking its place alongside the crucial mid-1970s music of Malombo, Abdullah Ibrahim, and Batsumi, it is a defining but unsung musical statement of its era.’

Off-the-wall James Brown runnings, coming apart at the seams in Antananarivo, Madagascar, in 1967.

Ruff, mid-seventies Nairobi funk by Tanya Ria — aka Rachel Wanjiru — and the Trippers.
Althea & Donna, Lijadu Sisters vibes.

‘From 1972, the third and last album by this group formed in Johannesburg’s Alexandra township in 1968, announcing a shift away from early Memphis soul influences towards a pioneering African-driven jazz sound, and laying the foundations for the afro-fusion scene spearheaded by groups like Batsumi, The Drive, and Harari.
‘Black Soul features a who’s who of musicians from great South African bands over the decades: Zacks Nkosi, the renowned bandleader of the Jazz Maniacs and long-time member of the African Swingsters in the 1940s and 50s; kwela star Little Kid Lex Hendricks, known for his Columbia recordings of the late 1950s; Zack’s son Jabu Nkosi, who would go on to play with The Drive, Roots and Sakhile; and Banza Kgasoane later a member of The Beaters, Harari, and then Mango Groove.’

The Beaters started out amidst the Soweto Soul explosion, inspired by the music of Stax and Motown. They supported the likes of Percy Sledge and Timmy Thomas. During a three-month tour of Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia), they were inspired by the strengthening independence struggle, and musicians such as Thomas Mapfumo, drawing on African musical styles and traditions. Back home in Johannesburg, they swapped their Nehru jackets for dashikis, and grew Afros. Their new Afro-centric rock and funk transformed the SA scene. Black Power in music, to get you on the good foot. ‘During apartheid times we made people laugh and dance when things weren’t looking good,’ remembers drummer Sipho Hotstix Mabuse.
Here, Love Love Love retains the influence of US soul, whilst Harari, Inhlupeko Iphelile, Push It On and Thiba Kamoo encapsulate the new direction; with a bump-jive workout, fired up by Kippie Moeketsi and Pat Matshikiza, to close.

Brothers Nkululelo and Siyabonga Mthembu reworkimg the music of Mongezi Feza, Johnny Dyani, the Malopoets, Batsumi, and Philip Tabane.
Old wisdom in new voices, new wisdom in old voices. Tolika Mtoliki, ‘Interpret Interpreter’.
“Just brilliant,” says Gilles.

‘One of the best, rarest and most sought after South African recordings of the early 1970s, available again for the first time since its original South African release — the tough, jubilantly swinging township groove of The Jazz Clan’s 1973 debut LP, Dedication. It captures the acoustic jazz sound of the early 1970s in its pomp — a handful of tightly wound songs jostling for space, blending uptempo soul-jazz sensibilities with Latin influences and pronounced township jazz accents, the latter especially audible in Dimpie Tshabalala’s piano vamps, Jeff Mpete’s pattering hi-hat emphases, and the unmistakably South African swagger and dip of the horns on cuts like Rabothata. It is music on the brink of a transition, looking ahead but still dedicated to the sound of the golden years, and it could have been made nowhere else on earth but in Soweto.’

Blue Mabone!