Mandla Mlangeni

Biography
Articles

Mandla Mlangeni is a Johannesburg-based trumpeter, composer and bandleader. A superbly talented player, Manda is a member of the SAMA-nominated group Amandla Freedom Ensemble and has toured extensively as a member of the Cape Town Opera. Recently, his musical production Oratorio For A Forgotten Youth was premiered by the Artscape Opera House. Mandla is also highly active with Tune Recreation committee, a group which he founded to teach music workshops and provide healing to disenfranchised communities. Outside of his performance and education work, Mandla curates Monday Blues at the Bassline and a host of other Johannesburg-based concerts under the presenting banner of Afrikan Freedom Principle.

Shabaka And The Ancestors: We Are Sent Here by History

Read "We Are Sent Here by History" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
April 12, 2020

Even as Shabaka Hutchings moves the evolution of jazz forward, We Are Sent Here By History laments the present-day conditions of conflict, suffering, parity, and the struggle to survive. The saxophonist's breakthrough album came with his Sons of Kemet on Your Queen Is A Reptile (Impulse! Records, 2018). He also leads the jazz/electronica hybrid The Comet Is Coming. Shabaka and the Ancestors' debut, Wisdom of Elders (Brownswood Recordings, 2016) essentially featured the same group of South African musicians, but here ...

Album Review

Shabaka & the Ancestors: We Are Sent Here by History

Read "We Are Sent Here by History" reviewed by Serena Antinucci

by Serena Antinucci
March 16, 2020

Siamo stati spediti qui dalla Storia inconsapevoli di ciò che sarebbe accaduto. Avevamo un compito, l'abbiamo disatteso. Avevamo uno scopo, l'abbiamo dimenticato. Abbiamo disimparato la lingua della natura, sopraffatti dal potere e dall'egemonia capitalista. Oggi siamo stati chiamati ad afferrare la mano degli spiriti antenati, che tentano di soccorrerci, indicandoci una nuova strada della creazione, originata dalla distruzione. Questi spiriti non sono tornati per caso, è stata la musica a invocarli. We Are Sent Here By History è ...

Album Review

Shabaka & the Ancestors: We Are Sent Here By History

Read "We Are Sent Here By History" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
February 27, 2020

Reed player Shabaka Hutchings became the first British musician to sign to the iconic (for once the word is justified) Impulse! label when his band Sons of Kemet did so in 2018. It was a deal for which his management could rightly be proud. It was also an affirmation which Hutchings felt deeply, for in the 1960s and 1970s Impulse! had recorded many of his formative influences, John Coltrane, Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders among them. In 2019 Hutchings took ...

Interview

Mandla Mlangeni: Born to Be

by Seton Hawkins
June 11, 2018

Mandla Mlangeni has been engaged. The South African trumpeter, composer, and bandleader oversees three groups, notably the Amandla Freedom Ensemble and the Tune Recreation Committee. Additionally, his works are marked by an intense effort to explore and connect with social discourse in the country today. Indeed, from the Tune Recreation Committee's naming nod to South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to the Amandla Freedom Ensemble's latest project Born to Be Black: A Celebration of the Conscious Soul exploring black identity, ...