Various: Umoja

By GRAHAM REID

(Herald rating: * * * )

Original cast recording of the visually vibrant, gumboot-stomp-ing, gospel-swaying South African dance show which opened a short season in Auckland this week.

This aural memento will doubtless be more an impulse buy in the Civic lobby than a considered decision in a record shop later. But it will have longevity.

After the title track it kicks straight into Miriam Makeba's famous and catchy Pata Pata (sounds like a recent re-recording rather than the excitable original, however), later there's the eye-chart title Qongqothwane (better known as The Click Song), and towards the end Ladysmith Black Mambazo's leader Joseph Shabalala weighs in. Between times are guitar-tickling township jive (in the memory banks as the sound of Paul Simon's Graceland), traditional music (much of it rearranged by troupe founder Todd Twala and Thembi Nyandeni), recent originals, and natty dance remixes of the title track all of which blend in seamlessly. Trumpeter High Masekela appears and the progression from oppression to optimism gives the overall uplifting arc. That said, it's a cast recording so it helps to have been there.

Label: Universal