Robbie Jansen, Barney Rachabane and the reissue detective story

It’s getting easier to find reissues of historic South African jazz these days. But describing them accurately, after long years and from incomplete records, is much harder.

In a partnership that’s headlining itself ‘We are As-Shams’, Canadian indy wearbusybodies and historic Joburg label As-Shams/The Sun have been working together to excavate the South African company’s archive for music that needs to be heard again. One such – available digitally right now, but out on vinyl on April 22nd – is a compilation of music featuring the late pianist Lionel Pillay and reedman Basil Mannenberg Coetzee, Shrimp Boats. (https://as-shams-busy-bodies.bandcamp.com/album/shrimp-boats )

As-Shams archivist Calum MacNaughton describes the origins of the album like this: “As As-Shams’ first stab at an archival release in 1987, this was partly an attempt to give Basil centre stage. He’d played such a crucial role through the label’s history and yet had never had an album all his own. The art direction and notes have often led people to think of this as a Basil Coetzee album. .. “Shrimp Boats” was recorded at Gallo during the Plum and Cherry sessions so it was ostensibly a Pillay/Coetzee collaboration (riffing on a Dollar Brand arrangement of 50s show tune published  by Disney). The addition of Side B (without Basil) ultimately makes the release as a whole a Pillay album featuring Coetzee. .“

Irrespective of provenance, the tracks are beautiful. They capture perfectly the soulful intensity of Coetzee’s playing, but also the powerful musical intelligence of Pillay as bandleader as well as pianist for the sessions in question. (The latter, incidentally, is long overdue more reissues showcasing his skill. As well as being the pianist on Yakhal’Inkomo – for which he’s best known – he also created the Cherry track on Plum and Cherry, and has the albums October Magic, Deeper in Black and Deeper in White to his credit, as well as a priceless interpretation of My Heart Stood Still on the extremely hard to find 1968 Mankunku Jazz Show Live at the Orlando ‘Y’ .)

But confirming provenance for everything posed problems. In a situation familiar to all music researchers, the archive master had tracklistings but no credits. The 1980 date for that master did not rule out the possibility that some of the recording was done in 1978, at the time of the second Spirits Rejoice album and Deeper In Black. The tape box carried multiple annotations from both ’70s and ’80s – and we know, too, that tape box annotations are often near-illegible and sometimes over-written if a box is re-used. After painstaking detective work, a personnel list for the album was created in which the featured reedman on the various tracks were listed as Coetzee, Duku Makasi and Barney Rachabane.

Lionel Pillay

But here’s the thing. The fourth track on that album is a free-wheeling cover of Birdland, sounding much more Spirits Rejoice than the others. When the compilation appeared on cassette in 1987, I bought it and, quite by chance, played it to visiting members of the Robbie Jansen band, in Gaborone for a gig at the Holiday Inn. And when we got to Birdland, Jansen leaped to his feet, exclaiming, “Where did you get that? That’s me on there! That was a session with Spirits Rejoice and I always wondered what happened to that track…” His memories of the session were extremely happy ones, and he expressed nothing but pleasure that the track had finally seen the light of day.

Listen for yourself – that reed is unmistakeably Jansen. And his solo is a killer.

When the reissue came out, MacNaughton and I discussed attribution. He took the matter very seriously, contacting other musicians of that era to see if their memories could fill in what box-notes could not. As a result, the label plans to add a note to the release in future, explaining how different sessions contributed to the compilation, and re-attributing the Birdland solo to Jansen rather than Rachabane.

As Shams’ response is a model of what record labels should be doing: listening, investigating, verifying and where possible correcting. That, not my own involvement (which was pure chance), is why I’m writing about this. We know that musician-friendly labels such as As-Shams in the past struggled with resources and thus record-keeping. Today, we have the opportunity to put that right.

(Apartheid-friendly studios such as the SABC, on the other hand, deliberately obscured identities to conform to the race laws; that’s why Lionel Pillay often had to be “Lionel Martin”, something that undoubtedly contributed to his tragic psychological problems in later life.)

Labels operating in the 2020s, however, should not still be citing excuses for poor record-keeping. They know how important accurate details are for our music history, and on a digital release it’s simply a matter of typing in the facts: no expensive printing required. That’s why it’s with mixed feelings that I’m writing about some beautiful music in which the late Barney Rachabane is unquestionably the lead reed: the recent Afribeat digital release Upstairs in the Township ( https://afribeat.bandcamp.com/album/upstairs-in-the-township )

This 2010 session arrived in the wake of Rachabane’s death. In the 20-teens his playing was at its peak, combining the fiery shout that had been his trademark since his youth with even greater skill and a refined, mature understanding of space and tension. There’s no question that this session merited a release. The music is powerful and moving, featuring, among its dozen tracks, what must be a definitive version of the saxophonist’s well-loved Kwela Mama and an incandescent Dance for Lebo. For those who loved Bra’ Barney’s sound and skill, it’s an invaluable addition to the discography.

Its archival value, though, is currently eroded by very limited digital liner notes – maybe something fuller is planned for a hardcopy release? Though a full ensemble is heard playing, only the participating members of the Rachabane family are named. We are told that Neil Solomon contributed some additional work to the release, but not precisely what.

Most problematically, however, one track, dubbed Township Jazz  https://afribeat.bandcamp.com/track/Township-jazz and credited as a Rachabane composition, is, in fact, unmistakeably, Umsenge, composed by Tete Mbambisa  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpI3TJcof-I Rachabane played on the original Jazz Disciples 1967, 7″ release of Umsenge, so it’s easy to see why he would have wanted to revisit it. But the melody is well enough known – and as Mbambisa’s composition: the pianist has also revisited it in his recent work – that somebody connected to this release should have been able to ensure a correct attribution.

Mbambisa suffered neglect, mis-attribution and, of course, denial of financial reward throughout the apartheid era. He should, in his golden years, at least be able to assume that such disrespect is over. It’s to be hoped this error will be corrected as soon as possible, so that what is otherwise a glowing rediscovery from Rachabane’s recorded opus can take its rightful place in his history.

The detective work is never easy, but it has to be done. Because this is our history we’re rebuilding, and giving cultural workers their due is another of the human rights we should be conscious of on March 21, tomorrow.