Can You Feel It?

Last year the excellent Canadian crate-digging label We Are Busy Bodies reissued Armitage Road, a 1970 album by South African jazz-soul outfit the Heshoo Beshoo Group. The ensemble broke up soon after the album and drummer Nelson Magwaza and the horn section of Henry, Danny and Stanley Sithole teamed up with guitarist Adolphus ‘Bunny’ Luthuli to form The Drive.

The group recorded prolifically but their progress was tragically ended when Luthuli and Henry Sithole were killed in a car accident in 1977. In so far as one can untangle an obscure discography, Can You Feel It? appears to have been the second of eight albums the group recorded between 1974 and 1976. Comprising just three instrumentals, the highlight is the 13-minute ‘Way Back Fifties’, a warm nostalgic revisitation of the swaying township jazz sound of Abdullah Ibrahim and Hugh Masekela and their pre-exile group the Jazz Epistles. ‘Together’ has a more American feel and bears the influence of John Coltrane, while the eight-minute title-track is funkier, revealing a spiritual jazz influence with some stellar blowing from the Sithole brothers.