Umoja

Alec Khaoli was born on 5 November 1949 in Soweto and came of age musically on the most fertile creative ground South Africa has ever produced. As the bass player and co-founder of The Beaters, a late-1960s Johannesburg outfit blending township soul with worldly pop ambition, he was present at the beginning of one of the country's great musical stories. When The Beaters evolved into Harari in 1976, inspired by a township outside Salisbury encountered on tour through Rhodesia, Khaoli found himself at the centre of South Africa's defining Afro-rock supergroup, alongside Sipho Hotstix Mabuse, Selby Ntuli and Monty Ndimande. Harari became the first Black pop and rock band to appear on South African television, and the world outside took notice. In 1978, Hugh Masekela invited them to tour the United States with him.

The internal pressures of success and shifting musical tastes eventually fractured Harari, and by 1982 the group had disbanded. Khaoli responded not with retreat but with reinvention. He launched Umoja as his solo vehicle and took guitarist Donovan Knox to A&M Studios in Los Angeles to record the early release Brown Sugar, announcing immediately that this new chapter would operate at an international level of ambition. He was also, at this point, the first Black South African to own a recording studio in the country. Fireworks Studio in Pimville, Soweto, gave him the creative freedom to explore and experiment, and he was among the first South African artists to incorporate a vocoder into his recordings, producing a distinctive sound that would prove influential well beyond his own catalogue.

Throughout the 1980s Umoja moved fluidly between Afro-rock, synth-funk, disco-pop and township bubblegum, crafting an escapist, dancefloor-ready sensibility that felt, in the context of late-apartheid South Africa, quietly defiant. Albums including Magic Touch in 1982, Say You Love Me in 1985, Sekuru in 1987, a pan-African tribute incorporating Shona language, and 707 in 1988 built a body of work that resonated across the country and internationally. U R The One was released in the United States, Europe and Australia. Bongolution gave his music yet further reach, and as a producer and mentor he developed artists including Don Laka, Chicco Twala and Vinolia Mashego of Jam Alley. The 2000 Gallo compilation The Best of Om Alec Khaoli and Umoja gathers the highlights of a catalogue that shaped a generation of South African pop musicians. In 2017, Awesome Tapes From Africa reissued 707, introducing Khaoli's work to a new global audience and confirming what those who had been paying attention always knew: the music had never dated.