'Scuse me whilst I kiss the Soweto sky

Includes great interview (4m50s in) with Funky Masike (ex Harari)

In Trance

From the duo behind 2008's Soul Science and 2009's Tell No Lies comes a new recording. Seven tracks wrapped up in an austere and over-designed CD package from Peter Gabriel's Real World Label. Once free of the neo-futurist packaging the weaving of shared and separate paths from Justin Adams and Julden Camara takes centre stage. Together and free and summoning the spirits...

Hamba Kahle Mama Sisulu...

© 2003-2011 Zapiro (All rights reserved), Printed with permission from www.zapiro.com, For more Zapiro cartoons visit www.zapiro.com

This week Albertina Sisulu passed away. Former President Nelson Mandela said ANC stalwart Albertina Sisulu was part of his being, in a tribute read out at her funeral by his wife Graca Machel at the Orlando Stadium in Soweto on Saturday.
“I want to bid farewell to a comrade and friend,” Machel read to the crowd. “You are part of my being, you and Walter...I want to express my deep gratitude to you.” (from iol.co.za)
The cartoon was drawn by the ever brilliant Zapiro reflecting on the death of Walter Sisulu back in 2003.

God Bless Africa, the Black Diamonds and the Dawn label

Another 45 gem from South Africa but issued in Angola just after the Portuguese military coup that led to the independence of Mozambique and Angola in 1974. It's a rendition of God Bless Africa, which was for most the anthem of South Africa's new nation rising.

The Dawn label specialised in South African soul and instrumental groove and spanned the early half of the seventies. Co-incidentally it was also the name of the journal of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the guerilla army of the African National Congress. Today the term Black Diamonds has come to refer to the increasingly affluent black middle class in South Africa.



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Retromania and the Poverty of Abundance

I had meant to post this last weekend but life got in the way. Just love this excerpt from the review of Retromania in the Observer paper in the UK:
'Retromania is a book about the poverty of abundance. At malls, on mobile-phone ads, in the background as we work at our computers: pop, usually in the form of anorexically thin MP3 sound, is everywhere these days. Perhaps that ubiquity puts a brake on its ability to astound or shape-shift. Perhaps the process of circulating and accessing music has become more exciting than the practice of listening to it. And perhaps pop's status as a futurist genre has been supplanted by the giddying, immersive realm of video games."

Re-issues like those of Sun Ra's club residencies are part of what's holding modern pop back apparently...I don't agree BTW. Back to normal (ish) programming soon with a bunch of 45s.