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— The Analog Vault // Essential Listening —

The Mankunku Quartet's 1968 album Yakhal' Inkomo clocks in at just over 30 minutes of jazz perfection. This compact, and to-the-point, album would sit comfortably in amongst some of the best works in the catalogues of any of the quintessential jazz labels such as Blue Note, Prestige and Impulse. Yakhal' Inkomo, however, was originally released on the South African record label World Record Co., which resulted in it becoming an elusive and sought-after piece for jazz collectors. First press copies sometimes fetch as much as £1,000 on the collectors' market. It has been long regarded as one of the finest South African jazz albums and DJ / broadcaster Gilles Peterson cemented this when he included it in his "best of genre" focussed radio show, 'The 20 - South African Jazz'.

Yakhal' Inkomo features the great musicians; Agrippa Magwaza on bass, drummer Early Mabuza, and pianist Lionel Pillay. Pillay was of Indian descent, making this a mixed-race group, thus the very recording of the album was an act of resistance as it broke the apartheid restrictions of the time. The title of Yakhal' Inkomo means “the bellow of the bull”, the Black audience would have understood this as coded community symbolism and an act of protest but it escaped the attention of the white government. — via Label

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Label: Mr Bongo, World Record Co.
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, Remastered
Reissued: 2021 / Original Release: 1968
Genre: Jazz
Style: Hard Bop, Modal

File under: Soul-Jazz / Jazz-Funk
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