Mannenberg - Is Where It's Happening

Recorded in June 1974 in a Cape Town studio and produced by Rashid Vally for As-Shams, a label whose name, Arabic for the sun, Ibrahim suggested. It followed Underground in Africa, a fusion of jazz, rock and South African popular music that sold well, on which Ibrahim had worked with the band Oswietie, in which Robbie Jansen and Basil Coetzee played saxophone. For this record he asked Coetzee to assemble a band. The piano in the studio had thumbtacks on its hammers, which gave it a metallic sound associated with marabi. The title piece began when Ibrahim started improvising at the piano and gradually asked the others to join in.

The album holds two pieces, Mannenberg and The Pilgrim. The cover photograph, taken by Ibrahim, shows Gladys Williams, who had been housekeeper to the musician Morris Goldberg. In the United States it was released as Cape Town Fringe. Vally played the music from loudspeakers outside his Johannesburg shop before release. The writer Chris Roper noted in the Mail & Guardian that the title piece is named after a Cape township, and the New Frame writer called the record one of the best-selling jazz albums in South African history.