www.kalahari.net - get your South African jazz here!

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I found, at long last, an on-line retailer in South Africa who sells CDs.

Here's the link.

http://www.kalahari.net/mus/front.asp?toolbar=none

I'd been looking for Linda Kekana albums for Swinging Swede's discographical thread and this turned up, to my surprise.

Some points

1 they don't (or aren't allowed to) export CDs of music not made in South Africa. That isn't a problem for me, because that's what I want (though there are some fairly cheap prices for Blue Notes).

2 the browsing facility isn't all that helpful - you can either have them listed in order of biggest sales (which means you wade through loasds of Norah, Kenny and Dianne Krall) or in alphabetical order of album title, which is also not too helpful. You can't select (or I couldn't find a way to select) South African artists or recordings. So you've got to slug. Sorry, but what else do you have to do?

3 postage - to UK this is 120 rand (£7.91), 180 to US ($21.11 Euro 15.92)) and anywhere else outside SA & Namibia. But the thing is, that's a charge per order, not per CD. So if you order a few, this is pretty good.

4 the delivery time is unlikely to be swift. The stuff is sent by international airmail. But our experience is that it often takes a month for a letter to get here from SA.

I was so excited, I ordered 3 albums. The Linda Kekana that I haven't got - "Kodumela" and two by a tenor player I've never heard of: Ntemi Piliso - "At Mavuthela" vols 1 & 2 - recorded in 1975. Looking forward to hearing these albums.

It's really HARD to get SA Jazz - or any other kind - recordings outside SA, so even if it does take a while for the stuff to come through, this is a real find.

MG