It's a Friday night in '87 and, at the smoky, beer-scented Roxy in Melville, the Pioneers are winding up their stonking set. Ten Ten Special: African Jazz Pioneers (1987) The conscription generation may be more partial to "Hou my Vas Korporaal," but there's no better South African song than this, with its still poignantly relevant chorus, which asks the fundamental question of how one lives in this strange place. Reggae Vibes is cool: Bernoldus Niemand (1985)Ī stomach-thumping, smoke-infected dub classic, with a beautifully executed guitar riff, all channelled through the pidgin Afrikaans-English of James Phillips's alter ego - a soutie from Springs. Mabrr's snarling but vulnerable moue teaches us: we put up with mistreatment from our lovers and go back to them because we need them and they're beautiful. It sidles west with its side-eyeing synth, but gets down in Langa-town with its black-power brazenness. It looks backward from the '80s to the '70s and calls up a downcast solo dance at the disco it looks forward from the '80s to the '90s and sparks a proto-kwaito block jam. There is only one South African song and this is it. "There are better days before us," go the lyrics. When Paradise Road was recorded, Malebo was on maternity leave and persuaded an 18-year-old Brenda Fassie to fill in for her on the album. Joy were Felicia Marion, Thoko Ndlozi and Anneline Malebo, who died of Aids in 2002. To an impressionable adolescent who heard them open for a wailing Leo Sayer at Sun City in 1981, it was pure, shivering emotion. Some called it Afrosynth bubblegum some called it crossover soul. Long out of print, the music of this forgotten troubadour is due for re-release by local filmmaker Laurence Hamburger. His solo career saw him quit "monkey jive" for the aural universe of Led Zep and Hendrix, and Chocolate Toffee is Whole Lotta Love meets Purple Haze, only harder, screamier, stranger. Saitana was Monty Ndimande, an original member of The Beaters, who became Harari. This track is off Saitana's solo album Jenakuru. DJ CountercurrentĪ psychedelic rock classic produced in Soweto during the uprising era? Yup. For me, it's the series of precise variations in tempo across the nine minutes: cycles of rejuvenation and subtle drama. Basil Coetzee lays out a saxophone solo of such painful beauty that Drum's jazz critic Joe Thloloe considered his playing to be "better than on the gold disc winner Mannenberg". It's an ambient waltz, with shape-shifting tremolo organ chords in a cyclical mantra. This hypnotic masterpiece capped off a three-year hot streak for the "brother with perfect timing". We compiled a list of 100, and profiled some immortal tunes.īlues for a hip king: Abdullah Ibrahim (1975) The LS team got thinking about South Africa's greatest songs of the past 50 years.
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