Ndikho Xaba And The Natives
Ndikho Xaba And The Natives

2022 repress of the 1971 holy grail from South African revolutionary spiritual jazz legend Ndikho Xaba. Pressed at Pallas in Germany and presented in a single sleeve with four page insert containing notes from Francis Gooding, recollections from Plunky Branch and unseen archival photographs and concert bills.

1971 REVOLUTIONARY SPIRITUAL AFRO JAZZ FROM EXILE
Matsuli Music presents soul, spirituality and avant-garde jazz from South African political exile Ndikho Xaba. Its rarity has until now served to obscure both its beauty and its historical significance. Making profound links between the struggle against apartheid and the Black Power movement in the USA Ndikho Xaba and the Natives is arguably the most complete and complex South African jazz LP recorded in the USA. It stands out as a critical document in the history of transatlantic black solidarity and in the jazz culture of South African exiles. This reissue from Matsuli Music brings this collectors’ treasure back into print for the first time since 1971.
Ndikho Xaba and the Natives opens a fluid channel of sonic energy that courses between two liberation struggles and two jazz traditions, making them one. It is a critical statement in the history of transatlantic black solidarity, unifying voices stretching from San Francisco to Johannesburg. There is no other recording or group in which the new jazz spirituality of the late 1960s is so fully blent with an African jazz tradition.