The Ibrahim Khalil Shihab Quintet Featuring Mankunku

★★★★ Spring MATSULI MUSIC. LP

Ill-fated 1968 South African jazz album’s belated return to vinyl.

Given just two hours of valuable studio time, with no second takes, the stakes were high when Spring was committed to tape. The self-taught Shihab’s swinging first outing as leader found the precociously talented pianist drawing the best from tenor saxophonist Winston ‘Mankunku’ Ngozi, whose innate grasp of metre and time makes the searing 12-minute title track sing like sunshine in the rain. Both excel again above the bluesy bass drone of The Birds, Mankunku’s unmistakably emotive voice (think A Love

Supreme-era John Coltrane) and Shihab’s intricately twisty solos stretching structure to extremes. First issued perilously close to Mankunku’s revelatory Cape jazz masterpiece Yakhal’ Inkomo and out of print since an EMI factory fire destroyed its original masters, Spring fully deserves its own place in the sun.