VARIOUS - NEXT STOP SOWETO: ZULU ROCK, AFRO-DISCO AND MBAQANGA 1975-1985 VOL. 4 (2LP) VINYL
VARIOUS - NEXT STOP SOWETO: ZULU ROCK, AFRO-DISCO AND MBAQANGA 1975-1985 VOL. 4 (2LP) VINYL
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VARIOUS - NEXT STOP SOWETO: ZULU ROCK, AFRO-DISCO AND MBAQANGA 1975-1985 VOL. 4 (2LP) VINYL

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This Strut compilation follows the march of underground psych and soul into the disco era. In the process, it gives us a glimpse at the South Africa that grooved under oppression of apartheid.

 

It’s hard to capture the complexity of a cultural scene in something as brief and necessarily cherry-picked as a CD-length compilation of music. And Strut hasn’t done that with the fourth volume of their Next Stop Soweto series. But in adding a fourth volume to the original three, the label has inched a step closer to focusing the musical kaleidoscope of 1960s and '70s South Africa into a coherent image. Perhaps 10 volumes from now, they’ll complete the trick. The first three sets focused, respectively, on mbaqanga and other township sounds, psychedelia and soul, and jazz. This one picks up most clearly where Vol. 2 left off, following the march of underground psych and soul into the disco era. In the process, it gives us a glimpse at the South Africa that grooved under apartheid’s heel; there aren’t attention-grabbing headlines in it, but people find a way to live and have a good time in even the most oppressive circumstances.

 

In spite of the series title, not all of the music was made in Soweto, the sprawling city that grew organically on the edge of officially white Johannesburg. Likewise, while economic stratification in South Africa during this period was severe, don’t come expecting something too gritty—this is hi-fi music recorded on good gear. It’s also almost entirely unknown outside of the communities it was made for; most of these bands don’t yield much information when you look them up online. The pop music of South Africa, for whatever reason, hasn’t received as much attention from Western reissue labels as West and East Africa, so most listeners will find themselves getting acquainted with a whole lot of artists they’ve never heard of before.

 

Almost all of them had something hot to offer, though. The Drive’s "Ain’t Sittin’ Down Doin’ Nothing" is a crunching funk instrumental with dive-bombing Moog and a slow-burning horn section, Abafana Bama Soul offers funk underpinned by the four-on-the-floor thump and bouncing basslines of mbaqanga, and the Movers’ "Soweto Disco" sounds like an Earth, Wind & Fire on-stage jam. Saitana’s group backing vocals on "1,2,3" cloak a pointed political message ("One, two, three, your turn is over/ ...our turn has started") in disco glitter, and the song builds tension and release with odd key changes and unexpected melodic shifts that mirror the message.

 

During this period South Africans were steeped in American sounds, and the English-descended white population, which tended to be more anti-apartheid and more likely to associate with the black population than the Boer-descended Afrikaners, was well-connected to the British music scene, a connection that sometimes bled over sonically into the townships. Kabasa’s "Unga Pfula a Chi Pfalo" is charging heavy funk, but the guitar seems to be on loan from some British hard rock band, and it gives the song a nasty, ass-kicking edge. The cold synths of Damara’s "Mmamakhabtha" have an affinity with new romantic synth-pop and sound oddly up-to-date in a post-chillwave world.

 

The excitement of hearing all these tracks for the first time is bolstered somewhat by knowing that this is just a first pass at South Africa’s disco era; there is a lot more to unearth and reassess. If there’s a chink in the armor here, it’s that the sheer amount of music there is to uncover from this place and time suggests that a generalist compilation may ultimately be a less effective way to explore it than to go deeper into the individual scenes and recording companies to find the stories that underlie the music. Nevertheless, Next Stop Soweto Vol. 4 is another well-assembled look at lesser-known music from a very complicated time and place.

Pitchfork