VA - Township Jazz 'N' Jive

In the second quarter of the 20th century, American jazz records began making their way to South Africa and exerting a huge impact upon the country's culturally besieged black community. As fascinated by the tight, hot jazz sounds as by the celebrity of the African-American stars playing them, urban musicians began appropriating the look, the sound, and, most courageously, the style of Louis Armstrong and the zoot-suited gangsters they saw in American films.

The township jazz, or marabi, that came to fruition in the '50s is some of the sweetest summertime jazz you'll ever hear. The main sound is the driving hot sound Armstrong perfected in the late '20s, but elements of Cuban rumba, American doo-wop, and South African a cappella singing slip into the mix. Groups like the Manhattan Brothers, the Jazz Dazzlers, and the Four Yanks provide gorgeous ensemble work, while legendary girl groups like the Skylarks and Nancy Jacobs & Her Sisters sing glowing soul tunes that would have made Phil Spector weak in the knees. This is the sound of people using music to transcend their own reality, and it's as redemptive as Jimmy Cliff's THE HARDER THEY COME or the best Sam Cooke singles.

"Before mbaqanga's stomping bumpkin intensity swept the townships, small jazz-style ensembles played indigenous tunes with a South African beat you could jitterbug to. This is that music, the same urbane mode cherry-picked so infectiously on the Mandela soundtrack: the swinging jive of the '50s, when social dancing was a passion in every slapped-together apartheid ghetto. Far suaver than mbaqanga or kwela yet no less African, far simpler than Count Basie or the Mills Brothers yet no less artful, it implied an indoor space even if it couldn't always find one big enough for its spiritual ambitions. Its matchless buoyancy is mostly a matter of two learned rhythms coming together. But it evinces an unsinkability nobody would ever puncture." - Robert Christgau

Tracklist:

1. Ubuhlungu - The Four Yanks

2. Clarinet Kwela - Kippie Moeketsi & The Marabi Kings

3. Banana Ba Rustenburg - Spokess Mashiyane

4. De Makebam - Jazz Dazzlers

5. Omnyakane - Royal Players

6. Something New In Africa - Solven Whistlers

7. Holilili - Skylarks

8. Ndenzeni Na? - Father Huddlestone Band

9. Baby Are Yeng - Nancy Jacobs & Her Sisters

10. Dudu Wam - Four Yanks

11. Tihapi Ke Noga - Dolly Rathebe

12. Loafers Corner - Orlando Seven

13. Ishumelosheleni - Manhattan Brothers

14. Kwela Blues - Lemmy 'Special' Mabuse

15. Ngi Hamba Ngedwa - Dorothy Masuka

16. Thaba Tseu - Manhattan Brothers

17. Mbube - Solomon Linda's Original Evening Birds

18. Midnight Ska - Reggie Msomi's Hollywood Jazz Band

VA - Township Jazz 'N' Jive

(320 kbps, cover art included)