THE BLUE NOTES – Blue Notes In Concert: Volume 1

 

(OG 220)

 

Track listing: Ilizwi/Abelusi (African Folk Song)/Amadoda/Nomsenge/Magweza/Ithi-Gqi/Mhegebe (African Folk Song)/Manje/We Nduna (African Folk Song)*

 

(*Note: This is the track listing as given on the original L.P. release. The track listing given on the CD and download reissues is quite different, but apart from two bonus tracks added on at the end, the music is identical.)

 

Louis Moholo-Moholo (credited as Louis Tebugo Moholo) (drums and percussion), Johnny Mbizo Dyani (bass and vocals), Chris McGregor (piano and percussion), Dudu Pukwana (alto saxophone, whistle, percussion and vocals).** Recorded at the 100 Club, 100 Oxford Street, London W1, on 16 April 1977. Produced by Ron Barron with Keith Beal. Sleeve design and photography: George Hallett.

 

(**Another note: the L.P. credits only the first-named instruments, so the rest of who-does-what-and-when is educated guesswork on my part.)

 

What a great back cover this is. One of Ogun’s best. Who are these smiling ladies? Why, it’s the wives of the Blue Notes! Lovely, nicely subversive and overdue (and well ahead of its time), that idea. It gives a good indication of the happiness that emanates from the record itself.

 

 

While it really is a pity that it took the stupid death of one of them to provoke it, the reformation of the Blue Notes as a working band was a major event. Johnny Dyani in particular had carefully kept his distance from his erstwhile colleagues for some time, but it was a delight to witness him back in action. Here they are, back in their natural live environment, and with what sounds like improved recording equipment from the time of OG 900.

 

The return of the Blue Notes also signalled a subtle change in direction for Chris McGregor’s approach to music-making. In fact he had been signalling it with the Brotherhood of Breath for a couple of years beforehand. Gone are the franticness and raging despair of before, to be replaced by incoming lightness and patience. The way in which these four South Africans were now organising their music was more gradual and cumulative, taking their time to play, repeat and elaborate on themes. This approach was more in keeping with the spiritual patterns woven in the course of South African tribal religious practice.

 

What this meant for the Blue Notes of 1977 was a more detailed, and therefore deeper, exploration of (and immersion in) their source material. Listening to “Ilizwi,” there is no rush to superimpose variants on its themes and rhythms; they arise from natural interaction, and the results are hypnotic and compelling. Keen listeners will note that Dudu Pukwana plays the melodies formerly known as “Diamond Express” and shortly to be known as “Kwhalo” (see OG 524) at strategic points. Most of the seven tracks listed side one of the original L.P. segue into each other; it is a near-continuous group meditation.

 

True freedom in music is a condition of development, rather than a perceived necessity. There are very few outwardly “out there” moments on the record, except perhaps when Dyani picks out the melodic line of his own “Ithi-Gqi” (which he will revisit on OG 520) beneath a thunderous Cecil Taylor-style keyboard rampage from McGregor. If anything, the record’s opening moments are heavily reminiscent of Taylor with Jimmy Lyons and Sunny Murray at Zurich’s Café Montmartre, where the younger Blue Notes would also perform just two years later – a primarily percussive approach with fragments of melody darting around like thrilled satellites. “Manje” is terrific hard bop which goes to several other extremely interesting places. Aside from a sudden drum explosion at “Manje”’s end, which leads into a brief solo to introduce “We Nduna,” Louis Moholo-Moholo mostly holds back, just concentrating on keeping the rhythm nailed down but simultaneously fluid.

 

And there are, of course, vocal chants of old Xhosa songs and plenty of percussion, all summed up in the closing and really quite moving “We Nduna” where you feel the surviving Blue Notes have located and secured a closure of sorts on the past. The pain of their homeland, needless to say, remained bleakly relevant; at this point, Steve Biko had less than five months to live. But what the Blue Notes were now offering was not so much fury (although that was still palpable) as hope. Moving on towards a better future which I am sorry to say only one of these four musicians lived to see fully. There never was a Volume 2, but maybe enough had already been said here.

 

Current availability: Now this is slightly complicated. A revised and expanded CD edition, now solely entitled Blue Notes In Concert, was released in 2008 as one-fifth of the five-CD Blue Notes box set The Ogun Collection. It was then reissued, on both CD and download, in its own right, in March 2021. The revised track listing can be seen on Bandcamp – a note for Nick Evans and Gary Windo’s “Funky Boots March,” a popular Brotherhood of Breath set-closer, which makes two cameo appearances here. There are two extra tracks; the powerful swinging kwela waltz of “Kudala (Long Ago),” and the exceptionally poignant chants-and-percussion finale of “Mama Ndoluse/Abalimanga.” And a chapeau grand to whoever did the band announcements.