Freedom's Children, Malombo Jazz Makers

In August 1971, the white wizards of South Africa's psychedelic rock underground shared the stage with the black witchdoctors of the Afro-jazz avant-garde. The event was the Tribal Blues concerts at Wits Great Hall, an unprecedented cross-cultural showcase of independent music hosted by the maverick 3rd Ear Music label. Ourang-Outang (2020) presents rehearsals and jams recorded by 3rd Ear director, producer and engineer David Marks in rural KwaZulu-Natal as this unlikely alliance of musical druids prepared for their concert appearances in Johannesburg.

The Freedom's Children with Malombo Jazz Makers recordings from this Valley of a Thousand Hills retreat were edited and distilled onto an album-length proof-of-concept tape shaped by songwriter Ramsay Mackay's vision of an allegorical South African "tribal musical" entitled Ourang-Outang. The reel was stored in a box scrawled with annotations and accompanied by a skeletal tracklisting with two takes of its catchy main theme and some outstanding jamming. The tape also contained a minute-long false-start that would be used as a coda on Side A of Molombo's 3rd Ear album Music of the Spirit in 1971.

As fate would have it, the unfinished stage concept was shelved and eventually abandoned but this didn't stop the infectious main theme from being re-purposed and recorded by South African artists Finch & Henson, Kenny Henson, Hawk, Margaret Singing and Joy over the course of the 1970s. Just shy of 50 years after its creation, the Ourang-Outang tape would emerge to tell it's story under Mackay's guidance and supervision before his passing in December 2018.