Black Disco - 1975 - Black Disco

Black Disco

1975

Black Disco

01. Spiritual Feel 6:10

02. Pops Blue 2:57

03. I'm Organized 6:20

04. Dark Clouds (Part 1) 3:15

05. Dark Clouds (Part 2) 6:10

06. My Girl 7:50

07. Ain't No Sunshine 3:05

Bass – Sipho Gumede

Flute, Tenor Saxophone – Basil Coetzee

Organ – (Pops) Mohammed Ismail

SPIRITUAL FEEL

Lonely night

Early dawn slow and sombre

There's one thing.

Hear deep in to your

Spirit not on the surface

Above all there's only

HIM

HE IS THE SPIRITUAL FEEL

Black Disco were a South African Afro-jazz/funk band that released three albums on The Sun (الشمس) label between 1975 and 1976. The band’s second album, Night Express, has gained a cult audience since its 2016 reissue on Matsuli Music. Included in the lineup was Dollar Brand saxist Basil Coetzee, who played concurrently in Pacific Express.

With a Yamaha organ and a dream, Pops Mohamed started his musical journey in the mid-1970s as the bandleader and composer of Black Disco, creating a hip melange of chill-out jazz with futuristic drum machine sounds and spiritual overtones. His cosmic organ transmissions were accompanied by two of the most sought-after session players on the South African scene, the sax and flute wizard Basil Coetzee, who had risen to fame in 1974 as one of the soloists on the hit “Mannenberg,” and Sipho Gumede, the young bass prodigy who was already rubbing shoulders with the old guard at the outset of his career. Backed at first with polyphonic beats from Mohamed’s electric organ and later taking on a drummer, Black Disco created a signature sound and a trilogy of innovative albums in a burst of studio creativity between 1975 and 1976.

The core of Coetzee, Pops Mohamed, and Sipho Gumede followed up Black Disco with the jazz sextet Movement in the City. Gumede simultaneously appeared in the jazz-funk septet Spirits Rejoice and later emerged in Sakhile. Mohamed became a prolific solo artist during the 1990s. Meanwhile, Monty Weber played on several late-’70s albums by Dollar Brand.