CAPE TOWNER Louis Moholo-Moholo, now 79 and the last survivor of the Blue Notes who arrived in Britain in 1965 as exiles from the scourge of apartheid, is now leader of a band of powerful British troubadours of another generation.

At this gig, he’s accompanied by bassist John Edwards, piano wizard Alexander Hawkins and two outstanding saxophonists of Caribbean roots — altoist Jason Yarde and tenorist Shabaka Hutchings — whose horns draw on the sounds of Jamaica and Barbados.

Moholo-Moholo perches erectly on his stool like a griot of old — rumbustious yet ever-subtle, propulsively rhythmic yet suddenly tender and drenched in quietude, this is a drummer totally attuned with past and present.
 
The pulse of his drums and the ring of his cymbals and rattle of his ceaseless snares attest to the throb of Africa’s life and humanity.

Each tune is anthemic, with themes of freedom lifting to inexorable climaxes with Hutchings’s rampant, adenoidal tenor saxophone or the fluidity and riverine flow of his bass clarinet.

Hawkins’s strident choruses and keyboard runs are lucid and forcefully struck, while the intense subterranean thrust of Edwards’s plangent bass and Yarde’s searing soprano saxophone and tempestuous alto choruses always return to the starting melody as if they’re the voice of the people.

This is a band dedicated to the people of Africa, Europe and the Caribbean and the unquenchable spirit of these virtuosi musicians shines through their extraordinary sounds, absolutely in tune with London’s streets of struggle.