Mango Groove
| Mango Groove | |
|---|---|
| Origin | Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa |
| Genres | pop music, marabi, kwela, world music |
| Years active | 1984–present |
| Website | mangogroove.co.za |
| Members |
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| Past members |
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Mango Groove is an 11-piece South African Afropop band whose music fuses pop and township music—especially marabi and kwela.
Since their foundation in 1984, the band has released six studio albums and numerous singles. Their most recent album, 2016's Faces to the Sun, was more than four years in the making.
Mango Groove formed in Johannesburg in 1984. Three of the four founding members—John Leyden, Andy Craggs, and Bertrand Mouton—were bandmates in a "white middle-class punk band" called Pett Frog, while they were students at the University of the Witwatersrand. In 1984 the three young men met kwela musician "Big Voice" Jack Lerole at the Gallo Records building in Johannesburg. In the late 1950s, Lerole had led a kwela band called Elias and His Zig-Zag Jive Flutes. John Leyden was enamoured with South African jazz of this era. Lerole's reputation preceded him. He and the boys from Pett Frog rehearsed together, and a new band started to take shape. The band's name was invented over dinner: a pun on the phrase "Man, go groove!".
In Mango Groove's early days, musicians came and went as the group evolved into a cohesive whole. Leyden was the only founding member who has stayed on since the very beginning, but the full roster eventually swelled to 11 members.Alan Lazar, a composer and arranger who became the band's keyboardist, explains that a big band with diverse musical elements allows for a variety of arrangements. For most of the band's history, it has comprised four vocalists, lead and bass guitar, a brass section, drums, keyboards, and the penny whistle. (The penny whistle is the central instrument in kwela music—a Southern African style that has strongly influenced Mango Groove's sound.) Lead singer Claire Johnston's soprano is complemented by backing vocalists Beulah Hashe, Marilyn Nokwe, and Phumzile Ntuli.
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