Freedom’s Children with Malombo Jazz Makers – Ourang-Outang

Description

1x LP Vinyl – SR06

In August 1971, the white wizards of South Africa's psychedelic rock underground shared the stage with the black witchdoctors of the Afro-jazz avant-garde. The event was the Tribal Blues concerts at Wits Great Hall, an unprecedented cross-cultural showcase of popular music styles hosted by the maverick independent label 3rd Ear Music. Ourang-Outang (2020) presents rehearsals and jams recorded by 3rd Ear director, producer and engineer David Marks in rural KwaZulu-Natal as this unlikely alliance of musical druids prepared for their concert appearances in Johannesburg.

The Freedom's Children with Malombo Jazz Makers recordings from this Valley of a Thousand Hills retreat were edited and distilled onto an album-length proof-of-concept tape shaped by songwriter Ramsay Mackay's vision of an allegorical South African tribal musical entitled Ourang-Outang. The reel was stored in a box scrawled with annotations and accompanied by a skeletal tracklisting with two takes of it's catchy main theme and some outstanding jamming. The tape also contained a minute-long false-start that would be used as an amusing coda for the A-side of Molombo's 3rd Ear album Music of the Spirit (1971).