Gwigwi Mrwebi Mbaqanga

The South African folk music that makes people glad to be alive!’ 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; also in The Jazz Maniacs and The Harlem Swingsters. He came to the UK from Johannesburg as an actor and clarinettist in King Kong — a musical about a Zulu boxer — which opened in London in February 1961.

Recording 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 our 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.