Vinyl LP
In 1973, amid the dark days of Apartheid, the Pelican opened. It was the first nightclub in Soweto, and it quickly provided much-needed cultural sustenance for the oppressed citizenry as well as offering a hothouse environment for musicians, where they were given the freedom and space to experiment, forging new hybrids of jazz, funk, and indigenous styles. Among the combos that regularly commanded the stage was Abacothozi, a nimble instrumental quartet formed by bassist Berthwel Maphumulo the same year the club launched. The band was rounded out by organist Mac Mathunjwa, his drum-playing brother Innocent Mathunjwa, and guitarist Joe Zikhali. The group’s nonchalant versatility ensured them plenty of work, often serving as the club’s house band. In 1976 the Pelican’s house manager Dick Khoza convinced Rashid Vally to produce an album featuring him fronting Abacothozi, generating the sleek funk classic Chapita.
Abacothozi soon splintered, but just prior to that recording, they cut a pair of overlooked albums on their own. The group’s debut album Thema Maboneng features addictive grooves heavily inspired by the American soul and R&B of the day; a slick strain of organ-driven soul jazz that gives Mathunjwa the lion’s share of the solo space. The album’s warmly infectious title track, for example, borrows some ideas from “Hung Up on My Baby,” an instrumental Isaac Hayes jam featured on his score for the 1974 film Tough Guys. At the same time, their music satiated local appetites for the emergent homegrown sounds popularized by the brilliant, then-exiled South African jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim, who scored a huge hit with his classic 1974 track “Mannenberg,” a paradigm-shifting Cape Town jazz track that fused ideas from several regional styles.
While the cool-burn arrangements and melodic shapes may borrow from the US, the band’s rhythmic drive is purely South African. Just when you expect “Khwezela Mkhwezeli” might break into the theme from Shaft, Maphumulo and Innocent Mathunjwa unleash a loping rhythm (subsequently dubbed “bump jive” after a hit instrumental by the Movers); there’s no missing the connection to mbaqanga, the rhythmically skittery, dominant pop style of the time. On “Jika Sibongile,” the bass intro clearly comes from that tradition, but once the suave organ swells and sweet-toned electric guitar kick in Abacothozi settles into a laid-back cosmopolitanism designed to entertain. The quartet weren’t necessarily groundbreaking, but they responded to local tastes to forge an amalgam that’s providing new pleasures nearly five decades later.
