Sunday, 31 January 2010

Sixties Twist Jive Jazz ‘n Ska Mbaqanga from South Africa


Reggie Msomi was a prolific writer who drew upon and fused multiple cosmopolitan influences into a sound that must have energised Western and African audiences alike. While having its distinct South Africa flavour, this fusion of jazz, jive, ska and twist would – if it had been so distributed - most likely have filled sixties dance-floors from Kingston to Kinshasa – from New York via London back to New Orleans.


Thanks again to artist and collector extraordinaire Siemon Allen for sharing these rarities with ElectricJive. If you have not yet done so – do yourself the favour of giving Siemon’s flatinternational site a browse, starting here.

new download link here (June 2015)



7 comments:

  1. Great post - thanks! I was wondering where 'Time for Jazz' was from as I couldn't find it on any of the covers you posted.

    Keep up the good work.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The RS link isn't working for me, unfortunately, though I shouldn't really complain since I'm not a paying RS member. Is the free link working for anyone else?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wonderful post, thank you Siemon and ElectricJive. It's so good to delve further into the SA music scene at this time. And what a shame so much of this fantastic material has remained unreleased! There's probably a great market for this kind of thing... collectors, aficionados, youngsters, general fans of this kind of music etc etc.
    NL

    ReplyDelete
  4. @ Bill Mill:
    The RS link worked for me.
    By the way, JDownloader is a great tool for RS links.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Had great fun playing this yesterday - will have to listen to the other album and the bonus stuff you put up as well... you know, this music you share brings so much pleasure to me, but I usually lag so far behind... keep bringing up the goodies! ... please!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Reggie Msomi's "Soweto Waltz" is an all-time classic recording. It is a shame that it seems to be completely unknown outside of this post! How strange that an unreleased test recording could contain such a gem. I feel privileged to have discovered it by sheer chance in this download. It should be on everyone's personal hit parade, but alas it's just on mine and whoever else downloaded this. Major gratitude for gifting this to the world!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Deleted. Can you re-upload it? Thx in advance.

    ReplyDelete

Electric Jive is currently receiving a deluge of spam. Apologies for the additional word verification requirement.