Formation Mango Groove was formed in
Johannesburg in 1984. Three of the four founding members—John Leyden, Andy Craggs, and Bertrand Mouton—were bandmates in a "white middle-class punk band" called Pett Frog, while they were students at the
University of the Witwatersrand. In 1984 the three young men met kwela musician
"Big Voice" Jack Lerole at the Gallo Records building in Johannesburg. In the late 1950s, Lerole had led a kwela band called
Elias and His Zig-Zag Jive Flutes. John Leyden was enamoured with South African jazz of this era. Lerole's reputation preceded him. He and the boys from Pett Frog rehearsed together, and a new band started to take shape. The band's name was invented over dinner: a pun on the phrase "Man, go groove!".
Evolution In Mango Groove's early days, musicians came and went as the group evolved into a cohesive whole. Leyden was the only founding member who has stayed on since the very beginning, but the full roster eventually swelled to 11 members. For most of the band's history, it has comprised four vocalists, lead and bass guitar, a
brass section, drums, keyboards, and the
penny whistle. (The penny whistle is the central instrument in
kwela music—a Southern African style that has strongly influenced Mango Groove's sound.) Lead singer
Claire Johnston's soprano is complemented by
backing vocalists Beulah Hashe, Marilyn Nokwe, and Phumzile Ntuli. Guitarist and longtime member George Lewis joined in 1984. He, John Leyden, Kevin Botha, Jack Lerole, and
Simon "Mahlathini" Nkabinde co-wrote "Dance Sum More", which was the first song Mango Groove recorded. The band had not yet found their singers, and this seminal recording was fronted by Jack Lerole and the
Mahotella Queens. When Johnston graduated from secondary school, she—like Leyden, Craggs, and Moulton before her—enrolled at the University of the Witwatersrand. She completed a
Bachelor of Arts degree while touring with the band. She and John Leyden married in 1999, and divorced more than a decade later. The band's first studio recording with Claire Johnston was "Two Hearts", which they released as a single in 1985. The band's first hit came in 1987: "Move Up", which was released on
7-inch record in an edition of 4,000, reached number one on the Capital Radio hitparade. Some of the band's other former members are drummer Peter Cohen, trumpeter Banza Kgasoane, composer/keyboardist Alan Lazar, penny whistler Kelly Petlane, keyboardist Les Blumberg, and trombonist Mickey Vilakazi. Before his stint with Mango Groove, Cohen co-founded the South African pop rock band
Bright Blue; he later joined
Freshlyground (est. 2003), a six-person fusion ensemble that has been compared with Mango Groove. Alto saxophonist and clarinetist Sarah Pontin left the band in 1986. After earning a
Master of Fine Arts degree from the
USC School of Cinema-Television in 1997, he settled in the US and continued his career in the
Greater Los Angeles Area. "Big Mickey" Vilakazi, a
World War II veteran, was also an early member of the band. He was 65 when he joined; Mango's longtime trumpeter, Banza Kgasoane, died 9 December 2015, age 65. At the funeral service in
Alexandra, Claire Johnston, John Leyden, and other musicians joined Kgasoane's son Moshe on-stage to perform a tribute to Banza. Moshe, like his father, took up the trumpet; he performs as Mo-T with the band Mi Casa. On 21 December, South Africa's
Minister of Arts and Culture Nathi Mthethwa memorialised Kgasoane in a
press statement issued by
the Department.
Albums In July 1989, a year after Mickey Vilakazi's death, the band released their first
studio album:
Mango Groove. Four of the album's eleven songs had previously been released as singles: "Two Hearts" in 1985, "Love Is (the Hardest Part)" in 1986, and "Do You Dream of Me?" and "Move Up" in 1987. After the album's release, three more songs were released as singles: "Hellfire", "Dance Sum More", and "Special Star". Mango's debut album stayed in the top 20 of the
Radio Orion national
album chart for a year, and peaked at number 2. This was the longest that any album had maintained such a rank on Orion's chart. However, when
Phil Collins released
…But Seriously a few months later—an album that had some anti-apartheid themes—it demonstrated a similar staying power. (Radio Orion itself was a national
FM radio station operated by the
South African Broadcasting Corporation. It operated only at night, with a format that included "a wide variety of music, phone-in shows and topical discussion.")
Mango Groove was followed by
Hometalk in 1990,
Another Country in 1993, and
Eat a Mango in 1995. In South Africa, each of these was released by Tusk Music—or by its One World Entertainment imprint.
Hometalk went
gold as soon as it was released in
South Africa (it has since reached
platinum status). In a 2014 interview, Johnston elaborated: "We experienced a creative lull. It happens to everyone; and I really learned a lot about myself during that time. I joined Mango Groove at such a young age, I needed to go out on my own and explore…". During this period, Johnston released her first solo album,
Fearless (2001), and a cover album called
Africa Blue (2004). She also recorded the song "Together as One (Kanye Kanye)" with
Jeff Maluleke in 2003; John Leyden was the producer. Johnston and Maluleke later recorded an album together:
Starehe: An African Day (2006), and Leyden produced albums for other artists. An impetus for Mango Groove to record together again came after the band launched their website in 2007: Fans kept asking when they would release a new album. After
Bang the Drum came the DVD
Mango Groove: Live in Concert (2011), but it was not until 2016 that the band released a new studio album:
Faces to the Sun, a
double album that took more than four years to write, record, and produce. "We don't churn out albums," said Leyden in 2015, when
Faces to the Sun was still in production. "Mango is a lot of people and we have different creative projects that we've done over the years.… [We've had] long hiatuses, but Mango has never stopped going." Between 1989 and 2009, the band sold more than 700,000 albums in South Africa; that number eventually surpassed one million. == Multi-ethnicity ==