Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand) - Dollar Brand At Montreux 1980

An Uncle Roddus Album Review

African music month

1. Tsakve (1:44)

2. Whoza Mtwana (8:46)

3. The Homecoming Song (7:35)

4. The Wedding (3:34)

5. The Perfumed Forest Wet with Rain (9:36)

6. Ishmael (10:01)

Carlos Ward — alto sax, flute
Craig Harris — trombone
Alonzo Gardener — el bass
Andre Strobert — drums

Well it has been quite some time since I got round to doing any reviews, what with two major earthquakes, my laptop experiencing a major meltdown and my ipod dying as well. Things are getting back on track now with a new laptop and I've finally got all my digital music reloaded into Itunes, so its time to get serious with all this obscure music I have been finding on the internet.

I decided that June is going to be African Music Month, with about 100 compilations of various types of African music loaded into one playlist and several albums loaded onto the MP3 player I am using until I can afford a new Ipod. Starting the African music month early with a review of one of the albums I randomly loaded onto the MP3 player this morning.

Abdullah Ibrahim, also known as Dollar Brand is someone I recently discovered via a blog I visit occasionally and blew me away with his Soweto Album from 1975. So I was chuffed to discover that I also had a copy of this album in my world music folder and duly loaded it onto the MP3 Player for consumption at work.

This well recorded live album was a little disappointing on first hearing on the headphones today and I still wasn't too into it when it repeated while exercising after work. A more laid back effort than "Soweto" and more conventional in its' Jazz than the aforementioned album. Which is why I probably didn't connect with it so much today, as it wasn't quite what I was expecting compared to the other Afro funky stuff I was listening to. Giving it another closer inspection tonight, I am finding this LP much more enjoyable and more Afrocentric than I first thought. "Whoza Mtwana" is my favorite and most African sounding and "The Homecoming Song" is also fun and more up tempo with great sax blowing over a really funky beat, a real fusion number. "The Wedding" is totally trad Jazz and one of those slow sloppy jazz ballads that I really don't get into and "The Perfumed Forest Wet with Rain" is also a slow number in that annoying-never really gets going- style, like a lot of euro jazz and finally "Ishmael",  with a title like that it is no wonder it has a strong Klezmer feel to it and reminds me a bit of Masada. Quite a minimal track with a repeating bass line and occasional drums filled out with sax and flute experiments. Better than the previous two tracks.

On Closer inspection, this album does present some rewards, especially on tracks 2 and 3. Mostly a Jazz album with African overtones and getting a Roddus rating of 3/5