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Tribute to Louis Moholo-Moholo

CHRIS SEARLE encourages you to go hear a landmark performance, and introduces some of the musicians

BLISTERINGLY BEAUTIFUL: Alexander Hawkins (piano), Larry Stabbins (saxophone) and Mark Sanders (drums) play the Vortex [Pic: Pete Woodman]

TOMORROW evening (August 27) at The IOO Club in London’s Oxford Street — one of Louis Moholo-Moholo’s favourite venues, his life in music and his anti-apartheid militancy will be celebrated by a host of British and South African jazz luminaries, including the Stabbins/Hawkins/Sanders trio, Claude Deppa and Friends, Steve Beresford, Evan Parker, Viva La Black with Jason Yarde and Shabaka, and the Martinique singer Francine Luce. Definitely not to be missed.

To give a flavour: veteran saxophonist Larry Stabbins announced the opening set of his trio at a recent gig at The Vortex by recalling the greatness of the late Cape Town drums griot, Moholo-Moholo, saying how he had first played with him in the Brotherhood of Breath in 1971. As pianist Alexander Hawkins was Louis’ final piano partner and drummer Mark Sanders is a devotee of his artistry, this was an ideal threesome to play what Stabbins described as “a celebratory lament” for the recently passed percussive genius.

Stabbins began on tenor with a huge blast of reedsong. The decibels of his immensely powerful, elegiac and blisteringly beautiful notes raged up the shopfronts and cosmopolitan food booths of Kingsland Road and shuttered stalls of Ridley Road Market — scene of concentrated anti-fascist activity in 1947 — while the romping, swinging, pounding lyricism of Hawkins’s piano remembered on his every key a great African drums virtuoso. Sanders’ polyrhythmic fire, snares crashing, his bass drum booming, his cymbals a synchronised rattle like a giant hobfull of boiling saucepan lids, made this a trio performance like no other.

Go and hear these musicians with their — in the words of the Palestinian laureate, Mahmoud Darwish — “music of human flesh,” in the tribute to Moholo-Moholo at Oxford Street’s 100 Club on August 27, when they will be among dozens of brilliant and loving musicians remembering him. Certainly not to be missed!

The Louis Moholo-Moholo Memorial Concert is August 27 at the 100 Club, 100 Oxford Street, London W1D 1LL. Tickets: the100club.co.uk.

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