While I was strolling around the Salt River district of Cape Town last week I chanced upon a local thrift shop. It had a small selection of CDs among which I found a volume of the Numero Group's 'Eccentric Soul' series of compilations. With 40 tracks over two CDs and an asking price of five rand (roughly 25p) I thought this was too good a deal to resist.
And so it has proved. This particular volume is devoted to the Way Out label from Cleveland which operated from 1963 to 1973. Here is a small selection of the many fine tunes you can find on the album, starting with a band whose name is crying out to be featured in Rol's Namesakes series if it hasn't already. According to Discogs there are at least 14 of them - this lot are #3.
Apologies for my absence here in recent weeks but until yesterday I had been in South Africa since the beginning of February, having managed to tag a holiday onto a short work trip so that I could catch up with all the local Gogginses in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Stellenbosch.
I also took myself into Cape Town one day - the poor family had earned a break from me - and checked out the street art in Salt River and the second-hand record and book shops in Observatory. Some examples of the former below, some of the spoils of the latter will follow when I get myself sorted out.
I caught a couple of shows while I was over in SA including the premiere of a revival of the play "Marabi" at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg which featured some very strong performers. But the highlight was a big family outing to see the Ndlovu Youth Choir in Cape Town.
The Choir started as a community project in the small town of Marapong about 15 years ago - and all the members are still recruited from there - but has grown to have an international reputation, in no small part as a result of making the final of "America's Got Other People's Talent" a few years back.
The Choir put on a great show with some excellent vocal arrangements and lively dance routines. The photo below shows the smallest choir member attempting unsuccessfully to teach some moves to a confused elderly audience member as a form of community outreach.
The set was a mixture of reworkings of hits by the likes of Queen, Adele and Toto and various local musical styles. The latter were more to my personal taste, and one of the highlights was their version of a song by the late great Busi Mhlongo. So here are a couple of tracks from Busi's 1999 album "Urbanzulu" and a couple of clips of the choir to see us out.
