Dick Khoza - 1976 - Chapita

Dick Khoza

1976

Chapita

01. Chapita

02. Zumbwe (Baby Tiger)

03. African Jive (Moto)

04. Lilongwe

05. Wd 46 Mendi Road

Bass Guitar – Bethuel Maphmulo

Drums – Negro Mathunjwa

Drums [African] – Dick Khoza

Electric Piano – Mac Mathunjwa

Lead Guitar – Themba Mokoena

Rhythm Guitar – Joe Zikhali

Tenor Saxophone – Aubrey Mahlangu, Aubrey Simani

Tenor Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone – Ezra Ngcukane

Trombone – Willie Nettie

Trumpet – Themba Mehlomakulu

Vocals – Edgar Dirgole

Dick Khoza’s Chapita is a South African jazz masterpiece laced with funk and seeped in Afrobeat. As stage manager of Soweto’s legendary Pelican Club, Khoza played a key role in cultivating Johannesburg’s soul, funk and jazz scene. Inspired by the Afrocentric rock juggernaut Osibisa, he assembled his Pelican Club compatriots for the 1976 session that yielded this landmark nugget of African vinyl history.

Dick Khoza’s family migrated to South Africa from Malawi and he spent his youth in Durban. He joined the army in the 1940s before throwing caution to the wind in pursuit of music, decamping for Port Elizabeth where he was able to study, network and build a foundation for his career. As a working musician, Khoza’s peregrinations took him to Cape Town and eventually Johannesburg, where he was employed at the Pelican Club in Soweto. As the nightclub’s stage manager, he was responsible for overseeing cabaret shows and jam sessions and played an instrumental role in cultivating the era’s soul, funk and jazz scene. After participating as a session musician for the As-Shams recording of Tete Mbambisa’s Big Sound album and in the wake of a life-changing trip to Malawi following his father’s death, Khoza convinced Rashid Vally to get behind his new Afrocentric sound and assembled his Pelican musical compatriots at Gallo Studios in September 1976 to put it down.

With Dick Khoza shrouded in a tribal blanket on the album’s cover, Chapita was a bold proclamation of modern African musical creativity and the sleeve’s brief liner notes detailed the incredible journey he took to make what is his only recorded output. A recent archival discovery revealed the unedited, handwritten notes that Khoza submitted during the LP’s production. With this digital album, we present this document as a bonus PDF, showcasing Khoza’s freewheeling narrative style and providing a rare artist's window on the story of South African jazz in the 1970s. His testimony underscores the creative risks he took, the relationships he fostered and the spirit he channeled to create this piece of South African music history.