Sibusile Xaba - Open Letter to Adoniah LP

LP version. The independent, South African record label Mushroom Hour Half Hour present Open Letter To Adoniah, a moving album by talented guitarist and songwriter Sibusile Xaba, who improvises the musical legacy of KwaZulu-Natal into an exciting, genreless future. A lynchpin in South Africa's new generation of jazz musicians, KwaZulu-Natal born guitarist and vocalist Sibusile Xaba has all the makings of an acoustic guitar master. With a vocal style that is part dreamscaping and part ancestral invocation, Xaba divines as opposed to plainly singing. Combined with a guitar style that is rooted in expressive picking, Xaba's music shatters the confines of genre, taking only the fundamentals from mentors such as Madala Kunene and Dr. Philip Tabane and imbuing these with a mythology and improvisational intensity all of his own. Open Letter to Adoniah is an album reverent of life and its connectedness to a higher source. The music emanates from dreams revealed to guitarist Sibusile Xaba over consecutive days. With percussionists Thabang Tabane and Moahanganai Magagula, the trio coalesces both geographic and spiritual influences, hinting at Maskandi (a music style dominant in Xaba's native KwaZulu-Natal) and the improvisational culture of South Africa's jazz avant-garde. Collectively, the musicians remold these influences, situating them within rhythms that span the continent. Thabang Tabane's influence over the project gives it a spiritual sensibility allusive to Malombo which his father Dr. Philip Tabane originated in the late 1960s. Mushroom Hour Half Hour is a Johannesburg based, independent record label and a mobile recording studio that unearths and records unique music from the African continent. Xaba's debut project is Mushroom Hour's first international release. Produced by Thabang Tabane.