South Africa music reviews

I love Abdullah Ibrahim's music - however, I must note that the trend in recent years has been towards his amazing, though highly understated trio sound (African Magic, Cape Town Flowers, and so on). The sound of this trio is absolutely magical, and Abdullah and his usual crew of Beldon Bullock and George Gray operate together as though they are communicating via telepathy.

And yet, I can't help but miss some of the older music - his work with Ekaya, or, even better, his 1970s work with Kippie Moeketsi, Basil Moses, Basil Coetzee, and so on.

Cape Town Revisited partially answers these prayers. Abdullah is here with his trio (substitute Marcus McLaurine in for Beldon Bullock though), and is performing in his now signature understated style. The rhythmic pulse is always there, always strong (if not pounding in your ears), yet they play around the beats. His sense of lyrical beauty is as strong as ever - his harmonies as subtle as ever. In other words, it sounds like a standard Abdullah Ibrahim release of late.

However, the addition of Feya Faku on three tracks is where the magic lies. It creates an immediate problem, given that whoever recorded it forget to mix Feya's trumpet level - consequently, the trumpet is nearly overpowering.

However, the result of the four of them has an energy I haven't heard in his music in quite a while. Feya Faku is of a younger generation of South African artists, and has clearly studied Ibrahim's music extensively (he even has a tribute track to the pianist on his own, highly worthy solo album). As a result, his three solo spots, especially "Soweto," are an absolute joy to hear. Faku's bright, versatile trumpet breathes new life into the group (without resorting to pyrotechnics and the like), while Ibrahim, McLaurine, and Gray provide the most wonderfully gorgeous cushion for Faku to play on.

This album is a must for Ibrahim fans. Also, if you can, do track down Feya Faku's own album "Hommage" - he truly is one of the great new musicians of South Africa.

The history of the San people is, as with many indigenous peoples remaining on earth, a tragic one. With their impending disappearance also comes the disappearance of all their knowledge, songs, and skills.

This disc has music by two groups of San peoples... the Qwii Qwii and the Xana Qwii. It is largely mellow, somewhat spare music consisting mostly of singing, some flutes and musical bow playing, setinkane (thumb piano to you and me), dzoma (their lute), ankle shakers, marimba, etc...

I like this disc, and almost love parts of it, but I do have a couple complaints. First of all, it was recorded in a studio. For this music, that doesn't make sense to me. The San people are some of the definitive "earth people" still alive today. Field-recordings should have been the method here. Why take these people out of their world, away from the natural environment where all of their dreams, spirits, songs, etc... come from and set them in a studio to record them completely out of their element? In the field-recordings context much of the rest of the community would have been around them, adding to the spirit and family atmosphere in which their songs and rhythms were born. Why cut these musicians off from that?

This leads to a sterile feel here at times. There is sort of a "stiff perfection" here that, having heard who knows how many field-recordings of other indigenous peoples, I know would not be the way this music would have come out had it been recorded in the heart of their community.

The other thing I don't really like is that there are a handful of tunes that are certainly not indigenous to these people. These tunes amount to Pan-South-African acoustic pop. Definitely not the highlight of the disc.

Having said this, I still quite enjoy this disc. I just know it could have been more. In particular here, the female singers are great. They have this sort of desert yodel thing they do... I really like it. That could be a poor way to describe it though. Don't be turned off of this disc just because you happen to hate Roy Rogers or Doc Watson-style yodelling. This is nothing like that. It'd be quite a haunting thing to be out in the bush and hear these women singing at night.

To sum it up, this is a good but certainly not excellent disc. If you're not necessarily looking specifically for San musics, just something out of the "African ordinary" (not that their even is such a thing!), I recommend you go to the Abayudaya: Music From Jewish People of Uganda disc. That is an absolutely gorgeous set of field-recordings of utterly heart-breaking music. You may like this Qwii disc, but I bet you will love Abayudaya.