WRITING this book,” says journalist, visual artist and poet Percy Mabandu, “was a project of intersections: between the personal and the historical and between the SA and international music spaces. In my life, it’s the song that’s always been there, even as a child, before I knew its name.”Mabandu is discussing his book Yakhal’inkomo: Portrait of a Jazz Classic, about the eponymous quartet album recorded by Retreat-born saxophonist Winston “Mankunku” Ngozi for the Teal label in 1968. It won Mankunku the Castle Lager Jazz Musician of the Year award and became quite possibly the best-selling SA jazz album of all time, with sales estimated by his manager, Christian Syren, at around 100,000 in the first five years. Reissues still sell well today, nearly 40 years later.That’s the “what?” of the Yakhal’inkomo story. Less understood is the “why?” of that unprecedented and persistent popularity, and that is the question Mabandu explores. A broad answer seems easy. Playing and composition a...
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