The Amandla Freedom Ensemble is a cultural movement founded on the pillar of promoting opportunities for everyone to experience live music.The ensemble highlights the compositional material of bandleader Mandla Mlangeni(trumpet) and executed by an impeccable dynamism by the ensemble in the form of Tumi Mogorosi (drums), Ariel Zamonsky (bass) Oscar Rachabane and Nhlanhla Mahlangu (tenor saxophones).
(AFE) has been described by the Jazz Times as an “urban arts ensemble which wraps elliptical melodies in three-part harmonies, rich with impasto, swinging like broken chandeliers.
Mandla Mlangeni was raised in Soweto, Johannesburg and graduated from the University of Cape Town. He has toured internationally currently with bands the Tune Recreation Committee (TRC), Amandla Freedom Ensemble(AFE) and the Native Groove Collective(NGC)mainly as a composer/arranger, bandleader and trumpeter. Mandla has performed with the likes of Hugh Masekela, Louis Moholo, Steve Dyer, Susana Baca (Peru), Sipho ‘Hotstix’ Mabuse and many more.
His music can be described as “combing church music with American post-bop and the bounding interwoven cycles of Eastern Cape music”, though not averse to experimenting with pop, rock, big band, salsa, Balkan beats and even R&B.
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