Recently released is Sanscapes One (MELT 2000), a curiosity-driven journey in the career of recording artist and producer Pops Mohammed.
The compilation is a remix of another album called Bushmen of the Kalahari, a seminal, unrivalled distillation of pure indigenous sound, created in 1998. For Mohammed it has grown out of a desire to preserve the origins of African music — pivotal in world music — the sound of the desert people.
Mohammed has always wished to preserve this rare product from a dying breed. According to him, “these sounds were never recorded … When I started studying music the sounds were at the back of my mind.” He first encountered these melodies in his childhood location of Kalamazoo, in what is today known as Reiger Park, a coloured township on Gauteng’s East Rand. They were from the migrant workers of the nearby East Rand Property Mine who came from different parts of the region, bringing with them instruments like the mbira (thumb piano) and the mouth guitar. They would jam around a broken piano from the local shebeen.
These sounds receded into his subconscious in the late Sixties when he went off to study music in downtown Jo’burg, at Dorkay House. There he encountered giants like Kippie Moeketsi, and a strange man with an imposing frame by the name of Dollar Brand. But it was not until 1981 when, spurred on by the emergence of a new sound from players like Phillip Tabane, Mzwakhe Mbuli, Batsumi and Amampondo that he found the assertive confidence to revive what had been with him since childhood.
In researching Sanscapes the SABC provided Mohammed with a 1952 recording of the Bushmen. Going back to the Kalahari, he was “astonished by how the people have preserved the music”. He set about discovering the regional sound and from his guitar training, expanded the repertoire to include the Kora, the mbira, the Didgeridoo of Australia’s aborigines, the Birimambau of the South American Indians and, of course, the mouth bow from the Bushmen.
“What I like to do with the traditional instrument is to move it, to make it the main instrument, instead of being percussive,” he says. In 1998 he made a digital audiotape of the work begun in 1952 by a musicologist he never got to meet (and thank). His recordings impressed British journalist Phil Meadley, who invited Europe’s leading producers to interpret and remix the tracks from Bushmen of the Kalahari. From Raj Gupta and Mehdi Haddab, to Afro Celt’s Animal Radio, Absolute Zero (not the South African outfit) and Soul Drummers, Europe’s dance floors are catered for. Sadly, Europe remains the primary audience in mind. In Haddab’s Nxa, for instance, the vocals are just about the only trace of Bushmen sounds that stand out.
The project is pitched as “technology meeting tradition”. But in many instances the ultra modern drowns out the ageless San sound. What is left of Africa serves as nothing more than a guide that ultimately gets pushed to the periphery. Nevertheless, Mohammed did all he could to ensure integrity: “We are not bastardising the culture we work with,” he says, “we are trying to enhance it.”
True enough. Mohammed sought advice on which songs could be tampered with and which should be left sacred and untouched. He then oversaw the project by turning down work that he felt strayed too far from the original.
Now the producers have parted with the information that two additional albums are in the pipeline. Looking at the first, it is obvious that these will need a radical rethink. Possibly hands-on producing by Mohammed himself. Or why not offer the project interpretation to local young lions like Brothers Of Peace, DJ Fresh or Christos? Mohammed is heartened by the success the project enjoyed on its recent tour to London, with DJs playing alongside trance-induced Bushmen. South Africans can see this act at the upcoming Oppikoppi and Awesome Africa festivals. The album’s proceeds will go to the project called Wimsa (Working Groups of Indigenous Minorities of Southern Africa).
In his recording career Mohammed continues his journey with the release, this month, of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (Sheer Sound). The title hints at the nature of the content — about as self-explanatory as it gets. The album features tracks from early in his career, performed by his new young band, featuring saxophone prodigy Moses Khumalo. Numbers such as Kalamazoo and Movement in the City date back to his earlier collaboration with bassist Sipho Gumede.
A three-part piece called The Journey, is a spatial continuum of changing moods. Then there is Arosa, dedicated to his good friend Andreas Vollenweider, with whose band he recently toured alongside Busi Mhlongo. “This is an honest album,” Mohammed says. “Some of the songs we did in one take. I am basically trying to show the youngsters what we used to do, and perhaps they can do it too.”
Sanscapes line-up
- Tings & Times, Hatfield, Pretoria, on September 4 at 9pm.
- Oppikoppi, September 7, 12pm to 1pm and 4pm to 5pm.
- Carfax, Pims Street, Newtown, September 14.
- Awesome Africa, Durban Exhibition Centre, September 29.
- Bassline, 7th Avenue, Melville, October 6 and 7, with Pops Mohammed. Â