Louis Moholo's Spirits Rejoice - You Ain't Gonna Know Me 'Cause You Think You Know Me
Enough of the Apocalypse, this bores me. It's time for another tribute to musical excellence and human transcendence! Who's with me?
Quick, someone find me a cultural figure too few people know about, their minds consumed as they are by pulsations of pure propaganda from the profligate, paranoid pigs in possession of power.
It has to be someone celebrating a birthday or a concert anniversary, that's all I ask. It can also be someone who died recently, although I hate those for obvious reasons.
We ain't gotta worry about any power possessing pigs passing away, because they never die. And when they do, they're just replaced by even more maniacal predators. You have to ask yourself at some point, what sort of person would even seek power in a system this porcinely, proactively pernicious? But I digress.
Now, about that birthday thing. Ah, here's one.
I was in the shower earlier, waxing poetic about what my all-time favorite record labels are. I came up with the usual Blue Notes and Prestiges, the obvious Charismas and Strata-Easts, and all those we love to Harvest and that give us Vertigo.
Well, if Ogun had a house drummer, it was undoubtedly today's birthday brahmin of the batterie.
Because our hero didn't just fight South African apartheid, back since the days of Nelson Mandela's initial imprisonment, with words. He fought it with bands.
Bands that, in those days -- can you believe that things were even more insanely oppressive than they even are now? -- for whom featuring a blend of Black and White faces was a revolutionary act fraught and wrought with real, physical danger.
Sure, it took another 30 years to fall and for Mandela to finally ascend and replace the autocratic bigots with actual, viable leadership.
But you could say that Apartheid in South Africa was doomed the moment Louis Moholo -- born this day in 1940 -- and Chris McGregor formed The Brotherhood Of Breath in 1964, and folks in Cape Town and the surrounding areas saw what that looked and sounded like on a stage, in front of people.
To celebrate was would have been Louis Moholo's 86th b'day, let's forget about the fuckery fanning the eternal flames of division, and fire up a sizzler of a set that features the man leading a whole slew of Ogun stalwarts through a transcendent 1999 UK set of sublime and unifying Spiritual Jazz. Who's with me? Thought so.
Louis Moholo's Spirits Rejoice
Y Theatre
Leicester, UK
9.30.1999
01 A Song/Usaka
02 Wedding Hymn
03 Amatchasanqa
04 Besame Mucho/Khanya
05 You Ain’t Gonna Know Me ‘Cause You Think You Know Me
Total time: 1:18:21
Kenny Wheeler - trumpet & flugelhorn
Paul Rutherford - trombone
Evan Parker - soprano & tenor saxophones
Jason Yarde - alto & tenor saxophones
Keith Tippett - piano
Paul Rogers - bass
Louis Moholo - drums
off-air mono FM capture of indeterminate origin; original broadcast date may be 12.27.1999
edited, retracked, repaired, denoised & remastered by EN, March 2026
427 MB FLAC/direct link
427 MB FLAC/direct link
This show has all the happy Moholo hallmarks: the sweeping, strident melodies that sound like National Anthems of non-existent countries. The blasts of anarchic freedom that resolve to sentimental, nostalgic passages. The funkafized interludes you can dance to. All wrapped in the signature organic authenticity of someone who doesn't just play music, but lives it like a well-worn ethos of experience.
He passed at 85 last June, but Louis Moholo will never die as long as there are connections to be made the assholes of autocratic authority don't want made, and there are arbitrary boundaries to be obliterated by the beauty such connections produce. On that, to paraphrase the late Don Cornelius, you can bet your last money.--J.
3.10.1940 - 6.13.2025