Any release featuring South African alto saxophonist
Kippie Moeketsi (1925-1983) is to be warmly welcomed. This is a reissue of a 1977 collaboration with the Paris-based Oklahoma-born tenor saxophonist
Hal Singer (1919-2020) that has been unavailable for 40 years.
Often introduced as ‘Bra Joe from Kilimanjaro’ by his close friend Abdullah Ibrahim, Moeketsi was a member of the
Jazz Epistles, the trailblazing 1950s band, alongside Ibrahim, Hugh Masekela and Jonas Gwangwa, who all stated many years later that Moeketsi was the foremost South African jazz musician of their generation. For someone of such influence and importance, his death in 1983 aged 58 after years of bitter frustration, alcoholism and injustice for him and his fellow musicians is a tragedy.
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Paris
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France
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