Nduduzo Makhathini’s new album is an addictive highlight in the current jazz offering ★★★★★

In 2020, South African pianist Nduduzo Makhathini attracted worldwide attention with what was already his ninth studio album, Modes of Communication: Letters from the Underworlds† It was his debut for Blue Note and a brightly colored album in which Makhathini linked South African vocals to New York post-bop. But maybe the pianist on that album wanted just a little too much.

To be new album In the Spirit of NTU is much more balanced and in all its versatility nothing less than an addictive highlight in the current jazz offering. It is the first album on Blue Note Africa, which was set up in collaboration with the African branch of Universal, and can be called a resounding success.

The album was recorded in one day in Cape Town in August last year, when South Africa was isolated by omikron. Makhathini had largely gathered another band around him, with vibraphonist Dylan Tabisher and trumpeter Robin Fassie Kock in the lead role. Linda Sikhakane’s tenor saxophone has remained and gets in emlilweni assistance from the alto sax of the American Jaleel Shaw, who recently shone on the Dutch stages in Nate Smith’s band.

It is actually inaudible that Shaw’s party in New York was recorded and cleverly edited into the piece. As on the entire album, Makhathini’s robust piano chords drive the song. You can hear influences from McCoy Tyner to Randy Weston in his playing, which is as lush as it is rousing. Immediately in the opening piece Unonkanyamba he impresses with staccato melodies. mother, which follows, is a gripping blues and the only song featuring his wife Omagagu. Makhathini himself can often be heard singing along in the distance in compositions in which blues, soul and jazz enter into a deep spiritual union with South African funk rhythms.

After an hour of steaming, genre-transcending jazz, the sometimes wildly hammering Makhathini slows down with a simple yet compelling motif. Senze’ Ninawhich continues in ntu and never let you go.