I have YouTube to thank for introducing me, a few months ago, to the track ‘You Ain’t Gonna Know Me ’Cos You Think You Know Me’ as performed by the Louis Moholo Octet, from their 1978 album Spirits Rejoice! It's a tune that comes across as simultaneously joyous and mournful, with the twin trombones of Radu Malfatti and Nick Evans at the fore, playing to glorious effect. The track quickly became a firm favourite. It had been composed by trumpeter Mongezi Feza, a former bandmate of Moholo’s, who had died in London in 1975 from untreated pneumonia, aged only thirty. This rendition is a wonderful, heartfelt tribute to him.
Trying to obtain a physical copy of the record proved more difficult than I’d anticipated, but, after a failed first attempt, a copy of the 2019 vinyl reissue finally arrived from a Discogs seller on Thursday. The rest of the album includes other straightforwardly melodic moments, alongside some quite intense free jazz (as befits a bandleader who also played with the likes of Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp and Peter Brötzmann). The opening track ‘Khanya Apho Ukhona (Shine Wherever You Are)’ is a bracing salvo in this vein. Overall it’s a varied and marvellous record.
I didn’t get on too well with the antique sealing wax mentioned in my previous post. It would seem to only want to half-melt into a sticky mass when heated, and would then sooner catch flame or smoulder than properly liquefy. Whether a particular technique is called for, or whether it has perhaps merely deteriorated or denatured with age, I don’t know. In any case I think I'll be using plain old modern wax instead, which I’ve had more success with. A new arrival yesterday was a Bortoletti wax stamp (Fig. 35), a somewhat ostentatious object in brass, gold leaf and glass with a tassel attached.
For the last few weeks I have been slowly pecking away at Jenny Erpenbeck’s novel Go Went Gone, as translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky (its title in German is the more euphonious Gehen, Ging, Gegangen). I finished it yesterday. I had picked up a hardback copy second-hand from a charity shop, curious to read something of Erpenbeck’s, despite not being overly enthused by the novel’s premise. In a nutshell, it concerns a widowed & newly-retired professor in Berlin who becomes curious about a group of protesting African asylum-seekers, at length befriending some of them. What could all too easily have been a worthy but dull tale is instead fascinating, profound & affecting – while also still light on its feet. Richard, the well-meaning protagonist, is especially well-drawn: his outlook coloured by childhood memories of a chaotic post-war city, and by a life largely lived in its Communist Eastern half. I thought this was an excellent book & will be reading more of Erpenbeck’s work.