Peter Makurube
When Allen Kwela lost his beloved Gibson, the whole nation was up in arms. The daily paper Sowetan ran an article appealing to the muggers to return that national treasure. The criminals returned the guitar to the paper’s offices – intact.
Kwela had been out drinking and was staggering home when a gang of muggers appeared and nationalised his possessions.
But, like his guitar, Kwela is back! The guitar wizard is an innovator and a visionary. He’s got style and, as he puts it, “I have a big following … black, white, pink, yellow, blue … and yet they ignore me.”
It will be harder to ignore him now that he has finally recorded an album, due out later this month. Kwela moved to Hammanskraal a couple of years ago after a rough time in the city that has been his home for over 40 years. Johannesburg hated his “bad attitude” – he drank hard and often berated his audiences.
All that is gone now. These days he has mellowed. In his spare time, of which he has a lot lately, he dotes on his seven-year-old son.
It took a year to record his new album, Allen Kwela’s Unbroken Strings. It is an exquisite piece of work: Kwela combed the length and breadth of South Africa recruiting musicians.
Kwela has a history of playing with young talent and his is a very tough school. Those who hung on regardless can now play anywhere in the world.
In the late 1960s he formed a mean trio with the late Nelson Magwaza on drums and Victor Ntoni on bass.
He had by then long left the recording studio scene to learn more about music. He was disillusioned, angry and frustrated over the raw deal he got at Gallo. ” I composed a lot of tunes. I was a major composer for Spokes Mashiyane ( the pennywhistle wizard of the Fifties ) which made Gallo Records and put it on the map. I was supposed to be millionaire by 1960 already because that was my music.
“I was the main originator of kwela music,” he declares boldly. “We were kids and we never commercialised anything. We were playing what we felt. Today people just walk into the studio and play a couple of chords and they say they are playing kwela.”
“I learned all I could about the guitar. I bought books and listened to records as well as being tutored in the music of Beethoven, Bach, to jazz with bra Mgibe Nxumalo.
Like his buddies, saxophonist Mankunku Ngozi and the late Kippie Moeketsi, Kwela is not the most recorded musician in the land. “They never marketed the music. They simply shelved it,” complains Kwela.
He went on to record another album with an octet “the cream of South Africa”. He called it Allen’s Soul Bag. “The album was shelved since it was done in 1972. Only a few friends and me know that album.”
He did another one four years later with yet another dream band, called Reflections. The album features Cedric Samson on drums.
Kwela was invited to Swedenin 1982 where he put together a quartet featuring Bheki Mseleku on piano, the late Johnny Dyani on bass and Gilbert Mathews on drums. “We made a recording of the sessions and one of these days I would like to go over and press it,” he says.
He also spent time in London and New York. He couldn’t take the winters so he came back home every time. Kwela’s last album was in 1990 but that too never saw the light of day. This new album seems to have come at the right moment for one of South Africa’s unsung musicians. The recording comes courtesy of philanthropist, Mary Slack, who has sponsored the making of this CD.
Kwela has a few words for his contemporaries. “I am very frustrated about the fact that the so-called exiles like Hugh Masekela and Jonas Gwangwa are keeping me at arm’s length. “I’m also disappointed with Peter Tlali because when Hugh Masekela was not here we used to feed him. We were the superstars but now I hear he’s managing Hugh Masekela and Rebecca Malope and so on.
“We’ve got to play man, it’s our right as citizens to play. I got a following – black, white, Indian blue, green. We’re alive, we are not dead.”
Kwela plays at the Bassline in Melville on Friday June 5 and Saturday June 6