One Night In Pelican: Afro Modern Dreams 1974-77 — homage to Soweto jazz

In South Africa’s swinging Fifties, Johannesburg Jazz made its way uptown. But after the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, the golden generation of musicians went into exile, back to day jobs or playing piano to bored diners in the hotels of the nominally independent black homelands.

With travel restricted, Soweto needed a nightclub of its own, a step above the shebeens. It got it in the form of Club Pelican, in an unprepossessing corner of Orlando East. The club, run by Lucky Michaels, served both as a meeting place for a new generation of ANC activists and as a training ground for jazz musicians, who would play endless jam sessions in between sets by the resident band.

This set compiles some of the bands most closely associated with the nightclub, spread across two LPs in a rough approximation of the jam sessions. It opens with the Pelican’s musical director Dick Khoza and Afro Pedlars, essentially the house band, on the 1976 track “Chapita”. Khoza’s drums lock in with Bethuel Maphumulo’s bass for a funky groove with a township swing from the brass. Edgar Dirgole’s baritone spoken vocals have their descendants in today’s South African jazz, for example The Brother Moves On.

Several tracks pay explicit homage to the club: “Pelican Fantasy”, from the shortlived Ensemble of Rhythm and Art, sets saxophone fantasies from Khaya Mahlangu against hot guitar licks from Themba Mokoena. Over its 12 minutes, “Night In Pelican” by Abacothozi (the house band in a different guise) comes to a rolling boil in the manner of Abdullah Ibrahim’s “Mannenberg”, although Mac Mathunjwa’s organ is more a premonition of Stimela than a recollection of Ibrahim. “Pelican City” by Almon Memela’s Soweto highlights the leader’s screaming fretwork.

Even the tracks that do not reference the Pelican explicitly carry its ethos of hard work and tight rhythms. Dimpy Tshabalala’s keyboard stings and the processed groaning on “Moshate” by The Headquarters mark it out as a lost disco classic — an epic drum break midway through the track serves to confirm this. A deep cut by The Black Pages in “There Goes” sets comically reedy keyboards battling with a hard funk bassline. The closing track, “I Have A Dream”, is by The Drive — a slightly different line-up from that responsible for the radio staple “Way Back Fifties”. Bheki Mseleku’s keyboards offer it an altogether slinkier vibe, the marabi giving way to Soweto soul.

★★★★☆

‘One Night In Pelican: Afro Modern Dreams 1974-77’ is released by Matsuli