CD version. African Piano is a solo concert given by Abdullah Ibrahim, then still known as Dollar Brand, at the Jazzhus Montmartre in Copenhagen in October 1969. It was taped informally in a noisy club, and its sound is documentary rather than hi-fi. The message comes through intact all the same: a South African reading of jazz history, carried by township songs and by vamps that recall Monk and Ellington.

Ibrahim plays alone, and every piece is his own. The tape first appeared in 1970 on the Danish label Spectator Records. In 1973 it was issued in Germany by JAPO, short for Jazz by Post, the ECM sister label set up in 1970 and run from Munich. Trio Records issued it in Japan in 1972, and the JAPO edition has been reissued many times since, on LP and later on CD.

The set unfolds almost without pause, with the eight titles running into one another as a single continuous performance. The eleven-minute Bra Joe from Kilimanjaro rests on a left-hand ostinato that never lets go, rising above the chatter of the room. Over it the right hand moves from spare, Monk-like lines to ripples and dissonant clusters. Short links such as the solemn Selby That the Eternal Spirit Is the Only Reality and the forty-second Xaba lead from one theme to the next. The Moon mixes gospel feeling with the lilt of highlife. Kippy is calmer and more reflective, and the closing Tintiyana gathers the earlier themes together.

Reviewing the 2014 reissue for London Jazz News in 2015, Andrew Cartmel heard The Moon as "a benign juggernaut hurtling to a joyful destination". Tyran Grillo, writing on ECM Reviews in 2013, called the record "a gorgeous, thickly settled album". In Spectrum Culture Pat Padua placed it between gospel, African folk rhythm, Ellington and the avant-garde, noting a warm live sound unusual for the label's productions.

This is the CD edition of JAPO 60002, first released by JAPO in March 1973. ECM reissued it in January 2014, now credited to Abdullah Ibrahim, in its Re:solutions series, which brings back 1970s and early 1980s catalogue titles remastered from the original analogue tapes.