Mango Groove is an 11-piece South African Afropop band whose music fuses pop and township music—especially marabi and kwela.
Since their foundation in 1984, the band has released six studio albums and numerous singles. Their most recent album, 2016's Faces to the Sun, was more than four years in the making.
History Formation Mango Groove was formed in Johannesburg in 1984. Three of the four founding members—John Leyden, Andy Craggs, and Bertrand Mouton—were bandmates in a "white middle-class punk band" called Pett Frog, while they were students at the University of the Witwatersrand. In 1984 the three young men met kwela musician "Big Voice" Jack Lerole at the Gallo Records building in Johannesburg. In the late 1950s, Lerole had led a kwela band called Elias and His Zig-Zag Jive Flutes. John Leyden was enamoured with South African jazz of this era. Lerole's reputation preceded him. He and the boys from Pett Frog rehearsed together, and a new band started to take shape."The Space In-Between." The Essential Mango Groove. (2008) The band's name was invented over dinner: a pun on the phrase "Man, go groove!".Shaw, p. 86
Evolution In Mango Groove's early days, musicians came and went as the group evolved into a cohesive whole.Shaw (1991) Leyden was the only founding member who has stayed on since the very beginning, but the full roster eventually swelled to 11 members. Alan Lazar, a composer and arranger who became the band's keyboardist, explains that a big band with diverse musical elements allows for a variety of arrangements.Shaw (1991) For most of the band's history, it has comprised four vocalists, lead and bass guitar, a brass section, drums, keyboards, and the penny whistle. (The penny whistle is the central instrument in kwela music—a Southern African style that has strongly influenced Mango Groove's sound.) Lead singer Claire Johnston's soprano is complemented by backing vocalists Beulah Hashe, Marilyn Nokwe, and Phumzile Ntuli.
Guitarist and longtime member George Lewis joined in 1984. He, John Leyden, Kevin Botha, Jack Lerole, and Simon "Mahlathini" Nkabinde co-wrote "Dance Sum More", which was the first song Mango Groove recorded."CD 2". The Essential Mango Groove (2008). Track listing. The band had not yet found their singers, and this seminal recording was fronted by Jack Lerole and the Mahotella Queens. Johnston joined when she was 17. She was receiving voice instruction from Eve Boswell at the time. Bertrand Moulton called Boswell in 1984 and asked her to refer her best female singer, and she recommended Claire Johnston. Leyden met Johnston for the first time in Rosebank, a suburb of Johannesburg. She played him some tapes of her singing, and went to see the band perform. "I was intrigued because I'd never heard anything like Mango Groove." After a month with no word from the band, Johnston received a phone call from Leyden who asked if she could rehearse for a show booked two nights later.702 Unplugged with Mango Groove. Event occurs at 1:29.
When Johnston graduated from secondary school, she—like Leyden, Craggs, and Moulton before her—enrolled at the University of the Witwatersrand. She completed a Bachelor of Arts degree while touring with the band. She and John Leyden married in 1999, and divorced more than a decade later.702 Unplugged with Mango Groove. Event occurs at 6:21.Moses, p. 137
The band's first studio recording with Claire Johnston was "Two Hearts", which they released as a single in 1985. The band at this time had seven members: John Leyden (bass guitar), Sarah Pontin (alto sax and clarinet), Banza Kgasoane (trumpet), Mickey Vilakazi (trombone), Sipho Bhengu (tenor sax), and George Lewis (guitar). On the back of the record jacket was a sales pitch introducing potential listeners to the band and their ethos. Nicholas Hauser, who wrote the copy, described "Two Hearts" as a "beatbox township waltz" that blends music of different traditions. The band's first hit came in 1987: "Move Up", which was released on 7-inch record in an edition of 4,000, reached number one on the Capital Radio hitparade.
Some of the band's other former members are drummer Peter Cohen, trumpeter Banza Kgasoane, composer/keyboardist Alan Lazar, penny whistler Kelly Petlane, keyboardist Les Blumberg, and trombonist Mickey Vilakazi. Before his stint with Mango Groove, Cohen co-founded the South African pop rock band Bright Blue; he later joined Freshlyground (est. 2003), a six-person fusion ensemble that has been compared with Mango Groove.Mojapelo, p. 127
Alto saxophonist and clarinetist Sarah Pontin left the band in 1986. Mduduzi Magwaza eventually took her place on the alto saxophone; he also plays the penny whistle.
Alan Lazar joined on as Mango Groove's keyboardist not long after the band's formation. He co-wrote some of their first songs, including the 1985 single "Two Hearts". In the mid-1990s he started producing scores for film and television, and won a scholarship from the United States' Fulbright Foreign Student Program. After earning a Master of Fine Arts degree from the USC School of Cinema-Television in 1997, he settled in the US and continued his career in the Greater Los Angeles Area.
"Big Mickey" Vilakazi, a World War II veteran, was also an early member of the band. He was 65 when he joined; John Leyden recalled that when Vilakazi died in June 1988, it seemed for a time that the band might break up.Shaw, p. 1
Mango's longtime trumpeter, Banza Kgasoane, died 9 December 2015, age 65. At the funeral service in Alexandra, Claire Johnston, John Leyden, and other musicians joined Kgasoane's son Moshe on-stage to perform a tribute to Banza. Moshe, like his father, took up the trumpet; he performs as Mo-T with the band Mi Casa. On 21 December, South Africa's Minister of Arts and Culture Nathi Mthethwa memorialised Kgasoane in a press statement issued by the Department.
Albums
In July 1989, a year after Mickey Vilakazi's death, the band released their first studio album: Mango Groove. Four of the album's eleven songs had previously been released as singles: "Two Hearts" in 1985, "Love Is (the Hardest Part)" in 1986, and "Do You Dream of Me?" and "Move Up" in 1987. After the album's release, three more songs were released as singles: "Hellfire", "Dance Sum More", and "Special Star". Mango's debut album stayed in the top 20 of the Radio Orion national album chart for a year, and peaked at number 2. This was the longest that any album had maintained such a rank on Orion's chart. However, when Phil Collins released …But Seriously a few months later—an album that had some anti-apartheid themes—it demonstrated a similar staying power. (Radio Orion itself was a national FM radio station operated by the South African Broadcasting Corporation. It operated only at night, with a format that included "a wide variety of music, phone-in shows and topical discussion.")
Mango Groove was followed by Hometalk in 1990, Another Country in 1993, and Eat a Mango in 1995. In South Africa, each of these was released by Tusk Music—or by its One World Entertainment imprint. Hometalk went gold as soon as it was released in South Africa (it has since reached platinum status). After Eat a Mango, the band released several compilation album, but they did not put out another studio album until Bang the Drum in 2009. "We took a break," Claire Johnston told an interviewer shortly after Bang the Drums release. "I wanted to do some solo things and get some of those frustrations and aspirations out of my system.… We just put Mango Groove on the back burner.… [W]e all did our own things, while still getting back together for the odd Mango Groove concert." In a 2014 interview, Johnston elaborated: "We experienced a creative lull. It happens to everyone; and I really learned a lot about myself during that time. I joined Mango Groove at such a young age, I needed to go out on my own and explore…".
During this period, Johnston released her first solo album, Fearless (2001), and a cover album called Africa Blue (2004). She also recorded the song "Together as One (Kanye Kanye)" with Jeff Maluleke in 2003; John Leyden was the producer."Together as One (Kanye Kanye)" was the official song of the South African Rugby Union in 2003. Johnston and Maluleke later recorded an album together: Starehe: An African Day (2006), and Leyden produced albums for other artists. Sax and penny whistle player Mduduzi "Duzi" Magwaza also released an album, Boerekwela (2005), and accompanied the Soweto String Quartet on their world tour.The title Boerekwela, which translates as "peasant kwela", is a bit of wordplay that alludes to the Afrikaans folk music genre boeremusiek. An impetus for Mango Groove to record together again came after the band launched their website in 2007: Fans kept asking when they would release a new album.Moses, p. 136
After Bang the Drum came the DVD Mango Groove: Live in Concert (2011), but it was not until 2016 that the band released a new studio album: Faces to the Sun, a double album that took more than four years to write, record, and produce. "We don't churn out albums," said Leyden in 2015, when Faces to the Sun was still in production. "Mango is a lot of people and we have different creative projects that we've done over the years.… [We've had] long hiatuses, but Mango has never stopped going."
Between 1989 and 2009, the band sold more than 700,000 albums in South Africa; that number eventually surpassed one million.
Multi-ethnicity
For the band's first seven years, the National Party was in power, and apartheid was an official policy of the government of South Africa. For a band with white and black members, the government's policies of enforced racial segregation made accommodations, booking, and travel more difficult, if not dangerous. Sometimes when they arrived at a club to perform, they were refused entry because they were multi-ethnic. On one occasion, John Leyden (a white man) was arrested on a charge of loitering after he gave a ride home to bandmate Jack Lerole (a black man).
At the same time, the state was trying to censor and suppress the anti-establishment music scene. In the 1980s and early 1990s, near the end of the apartheid era, Mango Groove and Juluka were the only major South African music groups with both black and white band-members. In the early 1990s Mango Groove was managed by Roddy Quin (with Run-Run Artist Management), who was also the manager for Johnny Clegg of Juluka.Mojapelo, pp. 123, 127 The two bands became emblematic of the rainbow nation envisioned by Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela. When Mandela was released from Victor Verster Prison on 11 February 1990 after 27 years of imprisonment, the US news program Nightline used "We Are Waiting" as a musical score for the event. Band members had written the song in anticipation of Mandela's release. The number of US viewers who watched the broadcast was estimated at 30 million. In 1994 the band were invited to play for Mandela's inauguration concert, to a crowd of about 100,000 people. This was the country's first inauguration of a president elected by both black and white voters.
"We weren't overtly political," lead singer Claire Johnston said in 2017. "The only song that was was 'Another Country'. But we changed the hearts and minds of people in a way politicians cannot."
Performances In South Africa
Mango Groove have appeared at numerous venues and music festivals in their home country of South Africa. In a 2015 interview, John Leyden expressed a need to limit the number of live shows Mango Groove per year in order to avoid overexposure in a small country like South Africa. "We have never stopped performing but we are very selective of the shows we do.… The essence of Mango Groove is… the live show."