Pop Reviews : Mbuli Stands Tall for Political Cause

for one, he stands closer to six feet, six inches than the nearly 7-feet stature advertised. But in his Los Angeles debut before a sparse crowd at the Music Machine on Saturday, the lanky wordsmith’s pair of hourlong sets conveyed a defiant political stance that went beyond mere entertainment yet worked perfectly well on that level.

Mbuli is often likened to Britain’s Linton Kwesi Johnson for setting his poems to music. It’s a valid comparison because, like Johnson with British reggae, Mbuli and his excellent backing quartet are stretching South African traditions.

There were shades of many South African styles--from Ladysmith Black Mambazo-style vocal sections by Mbuli and two female backing singers to instrumental passages reminiscent of jazz man Abdullah Ibrahim and the kwela sound evoked by a pan-pipe synthesizer tone. The dominant style was the buoyant mbqanga sound, but it was emphatically modern mbqanga thanks to guitarist Floyd Manana’s distinctive melodies.

But the savvy dynamics of the band arrangements didn’t overshadow Mbuli’s deep, resonant voice, which didn’t create the same sense of slack-jawed amazement as Mahlathini’s does, but had more than enough presence to cut through. His talked-sung vocals were delivered too fast for those unfamiliar with South African accented-English to grasp, but the ebullient performance was equally effective in conveying his message.