Twin-tenor magic from South African saxophonists Winston Mankunku Ngozi and Mike Makhalemele – working together here with backing from a sweet electric combo that features Trevor Rabin on guitar! The groove is open and fluid – the band just vamping and opening things up, to let Ngozi and Makhalemele spin out these long solos that have plenty to say – which is maybe why both artists are listed on the cover as "voices" in the credits! The vibe is different than Ngozi's early records, and much more in the style of Makhalemele's music
Bringing together Johannesburg’s two saxophone titans for a supergroup recording project was a visionary move by Jo’Burg Records in 1976. Following the success of Makhalemele’s debut The Peacemaker and Mankunku’s long-awaited sophomore release Alex Express, which both appeared in 1975, the bar had been set very high. Enamoured by their jazz contemporaries, the session was concocted by members of an exciting new South African rock group called Rabbit, who formed a backing group consisting of guitarist Trevor Rabin, bassist Ronnie Robot and drummer Neil Cloud alongside jazz pianist Tete Mbambisa. Recorded at the state-of-the-art Satbel Music Recording Studios, the inspired performances of this diverse cast of young South African artists at the height of their powers was captured with exquisite fidelity. Packaged as The Bull and the Lion, the album title references Mankunku’s signature composition “Yakhal’ Inkomo” (which means “the bellow of the bull”) and Makhalemele’s stage name “Ratau” (meaning "lion"). The pairing of Mankunku and Makhalemele stands with Moeketsi/Matshikisa and Pillay/Coetzee as one of the epic collaborations of South African jazz in the 1970s.
02. I Remember You (Dedicated to Henry Sithole) 07:46
03. The Roaring Lion 05:25
04. Blue Mike 09:11
05. Spring is Here 06:13
Tenor Saxophone - Mike Makhalemele
Piano/Organ - Jabu Nkosi
Bass - Zulu Bidi
Drums/Percussion - Nelson Magwaza
Composer: Ratau M. Makhalemele
Produced by Rashid Vally
Blue Mike is an accomplished and polished outing that leans heavily into a nostalgic yet modern take on swing peppered with virtuosic sax swag. An unrelenting Cape Jazz odyssey with Latin flair, "I Remember You" is dedicated to Drive saxophonist Henry Sithole, who died in in car accident 1977. The album also takes a mesmerising slow funk journey on the closer "Spring is Here."
Released in 1982, Blue Mike turned out to be a bookend for As-Shams, bringing an end to the imprint's golden age, which had started with Dollar Brand's Mannenberg - 'Is Where It's Happening' in 1974. Following its release, As-Shams shifted focus onto keeping back catalogue in print, later returning with the MANDLA and Roots imprints in the late 1980s and the Kalamazoo and African Echoes releases of the 1990s. Owing to the discovery of a lost batch of deadstock in the 2000s, Blue Mike is the most accessible original pressing to source from the As-Shams catalogue.
Originally issued in South Africa by Jo’burg Records in 1975 with "Peace Train" from Super Jazz Vol1.
Mike Makhalemele: Sax
Jabu Nkosi: Keyboards
Sipho Gumede: Bass
Hailing from Alexandra and nicknamed "Ratau" (meaning "lion"), saxophonist Mike Makhalemele (1938-2000) was a force of nature with a robust yet soulful tone and seemingly endless breath. He embraced the pop music scene as an enthusiastic collaborator and staked his territory at the intersection of township grooves with modern currents in soul, funk and disco. As a solo artist, he delivered a formidable run of albums in the 1970s that that made him the most prolific recording artist in South African jazz during this era.
First issued in 1975 by the maverick independent label Jo’Burg Records, his debut The Peacemaker was a tour de force that introduced Makhalemele’s heavyweight sax prowess (deftly accompanied by Jabu Nkosi on keys and Sipho Gumede on bass) while showcasing his innovative approach as a composer and arranger. To mark the arrival of a new saxophone colossus, the album’s profile portrait cover boldly evoked the iconic Yakhal’ Inkomo by the Mankunku Quartet from 1969. Mike Makhalemele and Winston Mankunku Ngozi would go on to share the spotlight on a collaborative release entitled The Bull and the Lion in 1976.
These three recordings come from the mid-1970s, a bleak time in the evolution of South African jazz. Black cultural life at the time was subject to a myriad of petty regulations intended to strengthen apartheid’s grip with the clear intention of annihilating political activity and protest. Clubs and dance halls were forced to close, since the authorities considered places where people gathered could potentially be hotbeds of dissent and protest; “Work was scarce,” said tenor saxophonist Winston Mankunku Ngozi, “we’d be at home. Some work practising, listening, it’s just we weren’t seen.”
Township jazz, an expression of local black cultural identity, was stamped on. In America, the funky backbeats of Earth Wind & Fire, Kool and the Gang and James Brown, and smooth jazz were dominating the FM stations and Hugh Masekela, whose impact on the American scene with an updated Township Jazz was widely admired back home, tuned his music to take account of this. In South Africa, commercial influences were seen as a route to making music and money and besides, American influences were less likely to command the ire of the authorities.
It is against this backdrop that these albums were made. In 1968, Winston Mankunku Ngozi’s Yakhal Inkomo had sales of almost 100,000, which put it up there with the best-selling South African jazz albums of all time. Translated, the title is ‘Bellowing Bull’, its memory invoked in the album title The Bull and the Lion from 1976 by Mike Makhalemele and Winston Mankunku Ngozi. The rhythm section is from the funk/rock band The Rabbits with no pretensions to jazz, who provide a competent, if rigid, funk-influenced backing of a good semi-pro standard that could be heard at the time on either side of the Atlantic.
Harmony is in the main static, contrasted by a ii-V-i section or similar in contrast and Rabbits’ function in the way of a Music-Minus-One recording, a familiar aid to students of all ages. Ngozi and Makhalemele are limited by the pop format aimed at broadening their audience from the specific (jazz) to a broader pop orientated audience so out and out jazz solos are held in check to fit the context of the music.
Makhalemele’s profile cover photo on his album The Peacemaker evokes allusions to the cover of Yakhal Inkomo. With Jabu Nkosi turning up the tremolo effect on his Fender Rhodes to max, Makhalemele is confronted with another funk/pop rhythm section underlined by the production job mounted on ‘Rainy Day’ with electronic keys and voices that echo Grover Washington Jr’s recordings in the States. On Alex Express with the soul group The Cliffs, Winston Mankunku Ngozi heads into Stax-Mar-Keys, Motown-Junior Walker, Bar-Kays territory, albeit with a Music-Minus-One feel, with Ngozi competent but derivative.
Johannesburgian trumpeter Stompie Manana, at various times a member of The Cliffs, whose career embraced a whole slice of South African jazz, is lost in the ensembles. In a postscript to these sessions – Ngozi became disillusioned by the South African recording industry and not until his resurgence in 1990s was his talent fully appreciated. And when when, during this period, pianist Dollar Brand (Abdullah Ibrahim) briefly returned to his homeland, he reflected, “After all those years in the States playing traditional South African music, I told musicians this is it, this is what we should be playing. But most wanted to play straight American jazz, they didn’t recognise the worth of their own music.”
