Everyone meet Eric Luecking, our first guest blogger.  Eric Luecking is a self-professed music junkie who runs his own audioblog, Record Racks, make sure to check him out!

South African music is something that I must admit I haven’t been previously exposed to much of, if any to my knowledge, over the course of my music listening life.  Typically when you hear about music from the continent of Africa, it’s mostly about Fela Kuti’s brand of Afrobeat, Mulatu Astatke’s Ethio-jazz, or Youssou N’Dour’s mbalax.  So recently when I got a chance to listen to the upcoming compilation “Next Stop… Soweto:  Township Sounds From The Golden Age Of Mbaqanga” featuring mostly late-60s and early-70s songs from the former apartheid nation, it was a wave of new sounds to my ears.

What I heard was a folk-like music imbued from a deeply spiritual experience for the performers, although not in a religious fashion.  There are elements of jazz and rumba, among others, mixed into these songs as a fusion known as jive (or in the native language as mbaqanga) that you can picture hearing as you’re walking down a street in a foreign land.  As sung in their tribal tongue, they’re distant enough due to the language barrier but inviting enough in spirit and execution that you could visualize stopping to listen to this band play along the side of the road while you dance with the singer as she pours her heart out before continuing your way down the street to the market.

S. Piliso and the Super Seven’s “Kuya Hanjwa” is a jaunty piano-driven instrumental is snappy and joyful.  It combines folk and rumba with a fervor that gets your head bopping with a happy bounce.  That same feeling is also inspired by the African Swingsters in “Emuva,” more instrumental fare that seamlessly integrates an acoustic guitar’s underlying guide rhythm with playful horns that have a certain exuberance to them for two-and-a-half minutes of pure jazzy bliss.

It’s music that certainly won’t overtake American popular radio’s music playlists, corporate or independent, or for that matter even crack a spin.  What it is more importantly, though, is a document showcasing a culture’s representations of feeling and rhythm.  Thank goodness for music archaeologists such as Duncan Brooker and Francis Gooding who take the time to research and compile a release like this to expose us to music we didn’t know we should be missing.  We may not fully understand the story being told, but it sure sounds good to hear it.

The vinyl is available now, with the CD to follow in the first week of March.

-Eric Luecking

www.record-racks.com