Dollar Brand, Johnny Dyani

condition (record/cover): VG+ (some surface noise) / NM

Two South African exiles in duo: Dollar Brand and bassist Johnny Dyani, recorded 1979 for Enja - piano and bass, voice and memory, the church and the township carried across continents and set down in a European studio with devastating tenderness. Dyani, the Blue Notes' great heartbeat and one of the most singular bassists this music ever produced, plays bass like a singer and sings like a bassist; Brand builds his rolling processionals underneath and around him, and the two voices keep dissolving into each other the way only shared history allows. The kinship is total, the grief and joy inseparable - exile music in the deepest sense, where every phrase points homeward. Among the most moving records either man made, which is saying a great deal in both cases, and a standing rebuke to anyone who thinks duo records are minor formats.

Essential South African jazz, essential duo music, essential full stop. Original Enja pressing.