The Drive Can You Feel It

The album has been remastered from original files by Noah Mintz, Senior Mastering Engineer at Lacquer Channel. It will be released on March 5, 2021.

Apartheid social engineering in South Africa resulted in increasingly restrictive regulations in the early 1970s. Musical styles such as jazz, soul and rock were viewed as subversive, and there were more and more restrictions on radio, and licensing requirements that meant playing to urban audiences was inherently problematic. Despite these setbacks, The Drive were indisputably the most talented group on the scene in South Africa during this period, renown throughout the country. By the time of the 1975 album Can You Feel It?, sales were buoyed with rotation radio plays of the hit Way Back 50’s, the first track on the album, which is still revered in South Africa to this day.

The Drive were formed by the nucleus of The Heshoo Beshoo Group’s horn section, Henry and Stanley Sithole, along with drummer Nelson Magwaza. These three had been crucial to the sound of the Heshoo Beshoo Group’s solitary 1970 Armitage Road album. The brothers were approached by guitarist Adolphus “Bunny” Luthuli to form a band to compete in the Alco Best Band Competition at Jabulani Stadium in April 1971. The Drive won the Alco competition and stayed together touring throughout South Africa. In September 1972 they also won best band at the Pina Culo festival in Umgababa.

Henry Sithole and Bunny Luthuli were both born in Natal: Bunny had also previously played with Henry in Almon’s Jazz 8. Bunny Luthuli’s approach was the genesis of South Africa’s greatest Soul-Jazz band The Drive, with the original line-up comprising the Sithole brothers Henry, Danny and Stanley, Bunny Luthuli, Mike Makhalemele, Lucky Mbatha, Nelson Magwaza and Anthony Sauli.