🇿🇦 Batsumi - Lishonile (1974)🇿🇦

During the brutal era in South African history known as Apartheid, the minority-white ruling party forcibly moved millions of black South Africans from their homes to segregated areas, stripping them of their citizenship and reassigning them to tribal Bantu status. But even in the face of this outrageous oppression, South African music thrived. Artists like pianist Abdullah Ibrahim (formerly known as Dollar Brand), and multi-instrumentalist Hugh Masekela gained fame both within the country and beyond. But Ibrahim and Masekela were the exceptions, rather than the rule. Because they both lived and toured abroad, it was easier for their music to get attention. For local South African musicians, operating under the threat of state violence, breaking through to European and American audiences was much harder.
From this difficult environment came the self-titled debut from Soweto band Batsumi, one of the region’s most unusual and lush jazz albums. First reissued by UK/South African label Matsuli in 2011, and recently re-pressed on clear vinyl, Batsumi sits alongside the Asiko Rock Group’s album and Mor Thiam’s Drums of Fire as true crate-digger classics-exceptionally rare albums that far exceed the hype generated by their scarcity. Batsumi was inspired by the Black Consciousness Movement of the late 1960s, which was led by anti-Apartheid activist Steve Biko, whose writings and famous slogan “Black is Beautiful” sought to empower black South Africans. The movement was an assertion of pride, and Batsumi’s raw, indigenous jazz is filled with the same sense of serene self-love that Biko preached.
On the album’s longest tracks, “Lishonile” the group launches into propulsive blasts before settling into expansive grooves, allowing the wind instruments to hover around the bass and drums before vocal chants arise.