Artist Bio:
Pops Mohamed was originally from Bemoni, a small town on the outskirts of Johannesburg. His real name is Ismail Mohamed-Jan, but he was given the fond nickname 'Pops' because as a boy he used to love eating spinach just like Popeye!
Pops was initiated into music at an early age. As a young man of 14, his idols were the Shadows, but more influential were the trips he remembers taking as a child with his father to Kalamazoo to hear traditional music being played "Although people wouldn't know one another....they would sit and chat, drink and eventually jam. That kind of fusion is as old as urban South Africa." Kalamazoo was therefore the inspiration for the album of the same name as well as being the name of his business.
At the age of 14, Pops abandoned his homemade box guitar for the real thing when he formed his group, The Valiants, playing Kwela soul and Latin. His next band in his musical development was Children's Society, which was influenced by the spirit of Haight Ashbury, playing a repertoire of Hendrix and Santana classics. However, it was his own original composition, I'm a Married Man, that gave Pops his first township hit.
Then Pops got together with Abdullah Ibrahim's saxophonist, Basil Coetzee, and Sakhile's bassist, Sipho Gumede, and landed the record deal that would make him even more of a star to township party-goers. He even traded his beloved guitar for keyboards. The result was the exciting and popular albums Black Disco, Movement in the City and Inner City Funk.
The '80s saw him diversify, using different traditional instruments and disciplines. He began with studio engineering and producing and learned to play the mbira, a Zimbabwean instrument commonly known by Westerners as the thumb piano, and the kora, a 21-string harp from West Africa. These instruments have since become Pops' trademark and have brought to his music a unique sense of spirituality that has brought him critical acclaim.
This exploration of indigenous instruments was crucial in his development into the dedicated and diversely talented holder of African cultural identity that he is today. His Kalamazoo and Sophiatown albums, released in 1991 and 1992 respectively, were both nominated in the Best Jazz Album category of South Africa's OKTV Awards.
Although Pops is very much a traditionalist, he is also interested in exploring the fusion of his soulful music with modern influences and expertise. His first album for MELT, Ancestral Healing, released in 1995, combines his deep-rooted, spiritual journey with contemporary instruments and electronics and features celebrated musicians such as vibes/marimba/congas player Valerie Naranjo (featured on the Outernational Meltdown series). The result was a partnership between exuberant township jazz and slick Western touches. Subtitling the album From New York to Johannesburg, he highlighted the theme of co-operation and cross-cultural collaboration.
Pops was a vital member of M.E.L.T. 2000's 'Outernational Meltdown' project, both playing in, and producing, the sessions held in October 1994. In 1995 he was an integral part of the Khoisan expedition to the Kalahari desert to record the inspiring traditional music of Africa's oldest inhabitants, the Bushmen. Pops sought to preserve their sound in a world that is fast marginalizing traditional, indigenous cultures. Accompanied by Ben Watkins (Juno Reactor), Dick Jewell (cameraman and documentary maker) and Robert Trunz (director of Melt), this journey had a profound effect on them all. Some of the recordings provided the backbone of Pops' highly acclaimed album How Far Have We Come, for which the tracks were taken from the desert to London where they were worked on and produced by a variety of exceedingly talented musicians from both Britain and South Africa.
Pops wanted to maintain the unique and special feel of the Khoisan music, whilst simultaneously creating a sound that people could relate to more closely. The result is an album that moves effortlessly from the timeless world of rural Africa to the global dance floor evoking a trance state untouched by time or space.
To purist critics of his blending of traditional, township and contemporary jazz, he simply answers, "I don't see all the new dance styles (hip-hop, trip-hop, house, jungle, drum'n'bass etc.) as a threat to traditional music. I see them as new platform to voice ourselves. Fusing new futuristic sounds with ancient cultures is about one of the only ways I know that can take these beautiful African sounds into the next century."
Whilst he embraces modern influences and combines them to his own music, Pops feels frustrated that Western music played in South Africa was, and to some extent still is, marginalizing traditional African music. The lack of investment in traditional music projects is of great concern to him.
— Courtesy Calabash Music
