Ndikho Xaba and the Natives - 1971 - Ndikho Xaba and the Natives

Ndikho Xaba and the Natives 

1971 

Ndikho Xaba and the Natives

01. Shwabada 12:13

02. Freedom 3:25

03. Flight 3:30

04. Nomusa 12:03

05. Makhosi 6:50

Ndikho Xaba - piano, percusion, bullhorn, seaweed horn

Plunky - tenor, soprano sax, flute, percussion

Lon Moshe - vibes, percussion

Duru - congas, percussion

Shabalala - bass

Kieta - drums

This is spiritual jazz at its best. Ndikho lightly touches a few keys, and the piano becomes a path through the bush where city lights illuminate the alleys on either side of him. A stumbling, brush-heavy percussion and a swirl of saxophone notes are echoes of a faraway life. The disorientation at the start of the first track, “Shwabada,” leads to relief as the musicians find their groove. And relief leads to the second cut, “Freedom,” the only vocal track on the record.

Ndikho Xaba was born in 1934, in Natal, South Africa, and went into self-imposed exile in 1962. He landed in Oakland, California, where, in the late ’60s, he formed the Natives. While he was the only native of the motherland, like-minded brothers congregated around his strong musicality and philosophy of Ujamaa, the concept of African socialism—who a person becomes is determined by the relationship to their “extended family,” the whole community. Ndikho’s community would come to include a couple of members of the popular NYC R&B group, the Soul Syndicate: Kent “Shabalala” Parker from Brooklyn, and a Richmond, Virginia, native by the name of J. Plunky Branch. These two would shortly go on to form the Oneness of Juju, along with Natives’ vibraphonist, Lon Moshe (Ron Martin).

The group comes together at the start of side two with a song cowritten by Ndikho and his wife, Nomusa. The track is named for her, but the easy flow of the band on this track really showcases the collective experience. It’s a perfect statement of transcendent unity.

The album ends with the frenetic “Makhosi.” The music seems to have grabbed a hold of the band, and to let them go would be its own death, so it opts to fade out. There is the sense that even after the players have left the room, the sound keeps pulsating through the air like a body part that has fallen asleep and is slowly, perhaps painfully, coming back to life. But the pain is a memory, and the joy and celebration of life will always come to the forefront.

1971 REVOLUTIONARY SPIRITUAL AFRO JAZZ FROM EXILE

Matsuli Music presents soul, spirituality and avant-garde jazz from South African political exile Ndikho Xaba. Its rarity has until now served to obscure both its beauty and its historical significance. Making profound links between the struggle against apartheid and the Black Power movement in the USA Ndikho Xaba and the Natives is arguably the most complete and complex South African jazz LP recorded in the USA. It stands out as a critical document in the history of transatlantic black solidarity and in the jazz culture of South African exiles. This reissue from Matsuli Music brings this collectors’ treasure back into print for the first time since 1971.

Ndikho Xaba and the Natives opens a fluid channel of sonic energy that courses between two liberation struggles and two jazz traditions, making them one. It is a critical statement in the history of transatlantic black solidarity, unifying voices stretching from San Francisco to Johannesburg. There is no other recording or group in which the new jazz spirituality of the late 1960s is so fully blent with an African jazz tradition.

The limited edition vinyl edition is presented with re-mastered sound in a gatefold sleeve containing unseen photographs and concert bills from Ndikho Xaba’s personal archive together with a personal recollection from Plunky Branch and extensive sleeve-notes written by Francis Gooding. The CD version reproduces this new content in a 24 page booklet as well including two additional tracks taken from a hard to find single released by Ndikho Xaba’s band African Echoes