There may be tons of compilations on the CD shelves at the moment, focusing on the better music coming out of South Africa these days. But this collection, compiled by Luyton Driman on the Meltdown label is possibly one of the best. There are eleven tracks on this album and each one features the strongest songs by the artists involved. Pick of the bunch is pianist Paul Hanmer's 'Chefs Groove' off his wonderful 'Trains To Taung' album. Sipho Gumede contributes the title track off his recent 'Ubuntu' album and Pops Mahomed weighs in with 'The Spirit'.

Two of these artists get to contribute two tracks; Max Lasser is represented by 'Lua Lua' and 'Jumpy', while the bassist Gito Baloi's two tracks, 'Mpfumo Samba' and 'Basic GB' are from his solo albums recorded while Baloi was taking a sabbatical from the band Tananas. Tony Cox's two previous acoustic guitar albums were very well received and here we have 'You Asked For It'. Other artists featured include Landscape Prayers, McCoy Mrubata, and Vusi Khumalo. Besides standing on its own as a worthwhile compilation, 'African Jazz Grooves Vol 1' will definitely ignite fans' interest in many of these artists' own albums.

Stephen "Sugar" Segerman

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