Equal Spirits: Wise about SA jazz roots but not Waiting for the future

UK trombonist and multi-instrumentalist Ralph Clarkson, now based in Bristol, grew up in London hearing, he says “the music of exiled South African jazz musicians” as well as, much later, working with SAMA-winning, London-based harmonica player Adam Glasser. It certainly shows on his most recent project, the 2020-recorded Wise and Waiting from Equal Spirits, launched last month.  (https://equalspirits.bandcamp.com/album/wise-and-waiting)

Wise and Waiting is a big recording – 12 tracks running over an hour and a quarter; lyrics in half a dozen languages – with a big (24-piece) ensemble. As well as a UK-based string quartet, and reed and brass players including Clarkson himself, Brotherhood of Breath trumpet alumnus Chris Batchelor and the production skills of Sonny Johns (who’s worked, among others, with Hugh Masekela), there’s a substantial South African contingent, including producer this end Peter Auret, pianist Yonela Mnana, bassist Amaechi Ikechi, drummer Siphiwe Shiburi, spoken word artist NoZaka and composer/vocalist Nosihe Zulu, about whom more later.

Doctoral scholar and choral teacher Mnana provides full, detailed liner notes on all the numbers. For once, we can easily access informed and informative analysis of where the music fits in the South African musicological and cultural landscape. That’s particularly important for UK listeners, and I wish some of the reviews I’ve read had consulted these, rather than simply echoing the generalised enthusiasm – of course! – of label ECN’s press release.

Not that the album doesn’t merit enthusiasm – it certainly does – but it’s doing some very specific things with its influences and inspirations, and its strength lies in those.

Threaded throughout are numbers that invoke the sounds of the South Africans in exile. In my favourite, Skip, the music combines what Mnana calls “a quieter fowl-run” from the brass with Zulu’s perfectly judged Makeba-style swing song. To Joburg recalls the brisk, no-nonsense big-city jive of its namesake and takes it in a very contemporary direction that’s extended in Egoli Affirmation – both riff on the idea of “going to Joh-an-nes-burg”, which inspired multiple early and later African Jazz songs.

Tlang Re Keteke builds towards a Brotherhood horn feel, with Batchelor, says Mnana, surprising him with a trill “and descending glissando after I requested an ululation”. (It’s no surprise to those of us who can recall Batchelor and another Brotherhood trumpeter back in the 100 Club day, the late Harry Beckett: the brass players in that outfit had naturalised ululations and shouts beautifully.)

On Closing, we hear the Joburg of today not yesterday: in the righteous urgency of spoken-word lyrics, samples, and the younger visions infusing the solos of Mnana and Ikechi. Mnana has always been a remarkable pianist: equally at home with the heterophony of free playing and the disciplined polyphony of choral song, whose keyboards sing even when his lips are closed – listen to Recitative. I still wonder why his name isn’t as prominent here as it should be.

The bassist displays his refined sensitivity throughout, and gets another chance to reimagine his own composition Travail, as the album’s finale, with a profoundly moving solo from Clarkson invoking memories of another exiled spirit, the late Jonas Gwangwa.

Look at the composing (more often co-composing) credits and half of them feature Zulu. She was a completely new name to me, and the press release recounts how she was invited to join Equal Spirits after volunteering her own isiZulu lyrics and melody for Skip following a band performance in Durban in 2018. But check her site online (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_bmBN3I4Yal4kNsupZxwWg) and you’ll discover a formidable new songwriter as well as singer. Bands looking for material: take note!

The undeniable feel-good collective energy of the playing isn’t the only thing to focus on about Wise and Waiting. There’s serious, skilled musicianship too, and a library of allusions to what all the players have grown up with and listened to. I wouldn’t have known about this album without the all-seeing Nothemba Maduma – for that, big thanks are due. Now it’s your turn to get acquainted.