Welcome to the third in an occasional series of reviews of albums in my collection that need revisiting. Most of these are older albums, or obscure albums, or both…at any rate, a little attention never hurt. Maybe you will find something interesting.
Juluka: Scatterlings
Released 1982
Personnel:
- Johnny Clegg: Vocals, guitar, umhupe mouth-bow
- Sipho Mchunu: Vocals, guitar, concertina
- Gary Van Zyl: Bass, percussion, vocals
- Zola Mtiya: Drums, percussion, vocals
- Scorpion Madondo: Flute, vocals
- Mike Faure: Saxophone
- Mike Makhalemele: Saxophone
- Glenda Millar: Keyboards and synthesizers
Tracklist
- Scatterlings of Africa
- Spirit is the Journey
- Umbaqanga Music
- Digging for Some Words
- Shake My Way
- Siyayilanda
- Kwela Man
- Simple Things
- iJwanasibeki
- Two Humans on the Run
The first time I ever heard Scatterlings I was stunned. It is easy enough to wax hyperbolic when we hear music that strikes our fancy, but in this case it is no exaggeration to say that this album was a revelation. The rhythms, the percussive sounds, the dominance of the acoustic guitars, and most of all the richly intricate Zulu language vocal harmonies were like nothing I had ever heard before. At its core the music is infused with traditional South African sounds and styles, but nevertheless it is unmistakably modern, fully comprehensible and accessible.
When Johnny Clegg, musician and future anthropologist, was 16, he met the Zulu migrant worker Sipho Mchunu, who had come to Johannesburg to find work. Clegg had already begun to immerse himself in the umbaqanga and kwela music that made up so much of South African street music, and in Zulu traditional dance. He and Mchunu founded Juluka, a band of mixed white and black musicians, a subversive and risky move given the political context of South Africa at the time. Despite the difficulties in finding venues to play in and radio stations that would air their music, they became a popular band and by the time Scatterlings, their fourth album, was released, they had garnered enough international attention to undertake a tour of Europe and North America.
