Chapita by Dick Khoza

Dick Khoza’s family migrated to South Africa from Malawi and he spent his youth in Durban. He joined the army in the 1940s before throwing caution to the wind in pursuit of music, decamping for Port Elizabeth where he was able to study, network and build a foundation for his career. As a working musician, Khoza’s peregrinations took him to Cape Town and eventually Johannesburg, where he was employed at the Pelican Club in Soweto. As the nightclub’s stage manager, he was responsible for overseeing cabaret shows and jam sessions and played an instrumental role in cultivating the era’s soul, funk and jazz scene. After participating as a session musician for the As-Shams recording of Tete Mbambisa’s Big Sound album and in the wake of a life-changing trip to Malawi following his father’s death, Khoza convinced Rashid Vally to get behind his new Afrocentric sound and assembled his Pelican musical compatriots at Gallo Studios in September 1976 to put it down.

With Dick Khoza shrouded in a tribal blanket on the album’s cover, Chapita was a bold proclamation of modern African musical creativity and the sleeve’s brief liner notes detailed the incredible journey he took to make what is his only recorded output. A recent archival discovery revealed the unedited, handwritten notes that Khoza submitted during the LP’s production. With this digital album, we present this document as a bonus PDF, showcasing Khoza’s freewheeling narrative style and providing a rare artist's window on the story of South African jazz in the 1970s. His testimony underscores the creative risks he took, the relationships he fostered and the spirit he channelled to create this piece of South African music history.

As-Shams Archive • Champions of South African Jazz • Independent Record Label Established in Johannesburg in 1974

Canada Archive Series Link: as-shams-busy-bodies.bandcamp.com

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