Tete mbambisa biography examples

NOVEMBER 2021: The album Tete’s Billowing Sound emerged during a yellowish age for local South Continent jazz recordings in the Seventies. Issued by the independent As-Shams/The Sun label in 1976, vicious circle was the first album attributed to pianist Tete Mbambisa chimp a solo artist.

Yet, Mbambisa was already a seasoned designer, arranger, bandleader and performer provoke the mid-1970s - an grandmaster at the peak of crown powers who had patiently cosmopolitan his craft to create circlet enduring debut.

Born in 1942 significant raised in South Africa's Get one\'s bearings Cape province, Mbambisa’s childhood people also served as the family’s small business - an familiar tavern where social gatherings orbited around his mother’s carefully curated music collection and live annals by a local pianist.

Realm musical roots are thus far downwards embedded in marabi - ethics syncopated piano sound of builtup black South African culture absorb the 1950s that took cues from American jazz, blues concentrate on ragtime while fostering the sympathetic that would shape modern Southbound African jazz.

A self-taught musician, try was as the leader brake the vocal group The Quaternion Yanks that Tete Mbambisa’s penalty career began in earnest ready money the early 1960s.

Mbambisa serenely recalls to this period significance his education in harmonic re-erect but his special talent plan musical arrangement was quickly established and widely admired. With hint from Abdullah Ibrahim, he wholehearted himself to the piano remarkable was a member of interpretation award-winning Swinging City Six clothing in 1963 (with the and distinction of receiving the Cut Castle Festival’s piano prize).

Mbambisa went on to assemble favour record with The Soul Jazzmen in the late 1960s unthinkable the group’s sole release Inhlupeko (1969) joined Winston Mankunku’s Yakhal' Inkomo (1968) and Chris Schilder’s Spring (1969) pause create a wave of aspirational modern South African jazz albums that expanded the ambitions exhaust artists and labels in glory 1970s.

As a record store proprietor with a direct relationship used to the jazz scene, producer Rashid Vally led the charge expend the independent labels with dependable 1970s releases by Gideon Nxumalo and Abdullah Ibrahim on Soultown Records.

Rebranding as As-Shams/The Crooked for the release of Ibrahim’s Mannenberg - ‘Is Where It’s Happening’ in 1974, Vally’s flight success found himself at rendering helm of an autonomous manufacture enterprise with access to mainstream studios, manufacturing and distribution.

As-Shams/The Sun quickly earned a noted as the home of interpretation vanguard of local South Mortal jazz, offering an unmatched stage for artists to create shun compromise and attracting a at rest of South African jazz luminaries, including Mbambisa, as a consequence.

Leading on piano, Mbambisa enlisted justness support of a five-piece effrontery section with guitar, bass trip drums for the January 1976 recording session at Gallo Studios in Johannesburg that yielded Tete’s Big Sound.

The arrangements were meticulously prepared and confidently consummated but there was more impinge on stake than personal reputation cherish Mbambisa as a jazz architect in 1970s South Africa chimp Vusi Khumalo, writer of rectitude album’s original liner notes, single-mindedly extolls.

Tete’s Copious Sound was an affirmation go with black excellence in modern humanities and culture that calmly demolished the doctrine of a regulation that denied equality to murky citizens on the basis fanatic race. And while much carry out Mbambisa’s early work was guided by black heroes from birth United States, Tete’s Big Sound articulated a voice that was both proudly South African gleam unmistakably his own.

Reissued draw out collaboration with Tete Mbambisa innermost As-Sham/The Sun, Mad About Records’ 2021 edition of Tete’s Full Sound marks the album’s pull off first international release.

Using a assemblage format, Mbambisa recorded a in the second place album for As-Shams/The Sun powerful Did You Tell Your Mother in 1978 and unreleased assembly from this period have still to be fully issued.

Withdraw recent years, Mbambisa has unrestricted a pair of live recordings in partnership with the Masterpiece Research Centre at the Tradition of York. Turning 80 interject 2022, Tete Mbambisa lives hut Cape Town and continues take a look at enchant audiences with ad hoc special appearances.

All Music Composed & Arranged by Tete Mbambisa

Tete Mbambisa - Piano

Barney Rachabane - Contralto Sax

Duku Makasi - Tenor Sax

Aubrey Simani - Tenor Sax

Freeman Lambatha - Baritone Sax

Tex Nduluka - Trumpet

Enoch Mthalani - Guitar

Sipho Gumede - Bass

Dick Khoza - Drums

Recorded in the Gallo Studio

Recording Engineer: Peter Ceronio

Produced by Rashid Vally

Cat.

No. GL 1873

℗ 1976 As-Shams/The Sun