The Blue Notes, one of South Africa’s first multi-racial jazz bands, first rose to prominence at the 1963 National Jazz Festival in Cape Town. Considered one of the greatest free jazz bands of their era (free jazz was a movement popular in the 1950s and 1960s that aimed at subverting jazz convention by collective improvisation), The Blue Notes emigrated to Europe in 1964 to escape harassment from the Apartheid government.

Veteran drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo, the last surviving member of The Blue Notes, brings the magic of the band’s freewheeling improvisations to this special concert at The Orbit jazz club in Braamfontein.

Moholo-Moholo is joined on stage by the SAMA-nominated jazz group Amandla Freedom Ensemble whose members include rising star penny whistler and saxophonist Oscar Rachabane and lawyer turned three-time SAMA-nominated saxophonist Sisonke Xonti.