How Rashid Vally showed us the way
Rashid Vally, the visionary behind South Africa’s iconic jazz label As-Shams, forged a legacy of revolutionary jazz that defied apartheid and continues to inspire new generations of musicians, activists, and music lovers.
Rashid Vally, producer, label and record store owner at Gallo Studios in 1975 with engineer Peter Ceronio (As-Shams Archive).
Rashid Vally’s reputation preceded him. Vally, who passed away on December 7 at age 85, was a cultural visionary and innovator in South Africa. His passing reveals just how far-reaching his legacy goes, with numerous tributes written from all over the world. Yet to many in South Africa, his story isn’t known, and in many ways, he is an unsung hero of jazz.
At his core, Vally was a true music fan—a music producer, label owner, and record store dealer. During the height of apartheid’s oppression, when the state clamped down hard on culture, he nurtured a racially inclusive home for music. Tied in with how jazz in apartheid had seen black musicians actively take a stance in a fight for freedom, Vally was in his own way a big part of the liberation struggle.
Born in 1939, Vally grew up in the Champion Buildings on Market Street in downtown Johannesburg. His father, Ismail Vally, ran a general dealer shop, Azad Cafe, which was situated on 11 Kort Street. As a side job, his father sold Indian music at the shop.“He often allowed Qawwali singers like Suliman Patel to practice in the grocery store, the bags of sugar and flour acting as soundproofing.” writes Matsuli Music’s cofounder Matt Temple in the liner notes of Dick Khoza’s Chapita reissue. His father then recorded some of these artists, like Patel and singers from the S.S Karanja at Trutone recording studios, releasing them as 78s and 45s.
Vally started to enjoy big band music. By 1956, when he left high school, he was selling jazz LPs at the shop due to customer demand. The album Somebody Up There Digs Me by Louis Jordan was one of his favorites. He spent time between delivering groceries by bicycle and playing records at the shop. At the beginning of the 1960s, Vally recorded langarmmusiek (ballroom dance) bands from areas like Fordsburg, Fietas, and Vrededorp, such as The Merry Mascots, El Ricas, and The High Notes.
The iconic Dorkay House became one of the only venues where black musicians could play, and Vally spent afternoons at the Sunday jazz sessions getting to know musicians like pianists Gideon Nxumalo and Lionel Pillay and drummer Early Mabaza. Club Pelican was another venue he would hang out at. Soon after, he opened a wholesale account with a US music dealer and sold imported jazz records. At this time, the café on Kort Street was then renamed Kohinoor (“mountain of light” in Persian).
Upstairs from Kohinoor was the Indian restaurant Kapitan, owned by the Ranchod family, which Nelson Mandela would visit as a young lawyer; important for being one of the only restaurants in Joburg that served both black and white clientele during apartheid.
Vally’s nephew Nazeer Mohamed paints a memory of his uncle’s shop: “A typical day in downtown Johannesburg, as you’re walking down Market Street, you hear this tenor saxophone blaring, and then you can get that smell. There was an incense shop next to Kohinoor, it was called Begums. And on a Saturday morning, you’re hearing this tenor sax blasting away, you’re getting the scents, cars are hooting loudly. Joburg was abuzz. That gave that part of the city a different kind of flavor.”
For music fans, this became one of the most loved record stores in South Africa, and people flocked from all over the country to visit. The shop was a hub for writers, political figures, poets, and photographers to gather and form a community around—with Vally being at the center of it. It resisted apartheid as one of the few places inclusive of different racial backgrounds, and many township and migrant workers were regulars at the store. Photographer Omar Badsha shared a memory of when he first got to know the shop in the mid-60s, and he was introduced to Vally through one of South Africa’s greatest artists, Dumile Feni. For musicians, it was a meeting place.
Artist Mogorosi Motsumi says, “The original Kohinoor in Kort Street was the go-to store for any serious jazz lover. I remember that it was the smallest record store I knew, yet it had the largest jazz collection. It was intimate. And the staff made you feel like you were one of the family.” He continues, “I remember one day buying an Abdullah Ibrahim record. I don’t remember the album’s title, but it featured Archie Shepp. As I handed the empty cover over, before disappearing into the recesses of the store room to retrieve the LP, the guy who helped me looked up and said, ‘You’ve just picked up a gem!’ That was the Kort Street Kohinoor! Much later Rashid opened other stores. They were more spacious and stuff, but you know what, I still preferred the Kort Street Kohinoor.” In 1982, another branch of Kohinoor opened up on Market Street. Over time branches popped up in Joburg CBD, Southgate Mall, Vereeniging, Pretoria—roughly 10 stores at its peak. Towards the end, Market Street was one of the last remaining, which moved downstairs, known as the Kohinoor Jazz Basement.
Musician Pops Mohamed worked at Kohinoor for three years with Vally and shares this memory: “We were a happy bunch of people. It was myself, Rashid, his younger brother Chota, and there was a lady who worked with us, Lillian. She was like the right hand of Rashid, she knew the shop like the palm of her hands. So Friday is shillaz [money] day. Friday is payday. Everybody’s coming to buy records! And we were always happy. We would buy fish and chips and lots of polony and maybe sometimes biryani, and spend the afternoon eating that food and selling albums, which was really nice.”
A journey into “The Sun”
During the sixties, soul was all the rage, and Vally’s first label was Soultown Records, which released local soul and funk bands. The first jazz LP he recorded was Gideon Nxumalo, entitled Early Mart. In 1970, Abdullah Ibrahim (then Dollar Brand) visited Vally to discuss a recording partnership, which resulted in the recordings of a number of albums, including Dollar Brand +2 (Peace) in 1971 and Dollar Brand +3 (with Kippie Moeketsi) in 1973. Later, Underground in Africa was recorded in 1974 and issued on his Mandla label (which Vally said alluded to the freedom chant “Amandla” but was hidden for political reasons). Other significant musicians from the Cape, such as saxophonists Robbie Jansen and Basil Coetzee, collaborated on a recording with Ibrahim of Oswietie who helped greatly to mold the sound emerging at the time.
The long-term relationship between Vally and Ibrahim was cemented through these recordings and lasted until his passing. Vally funded further recording sessions for Ibrahim’s new Cape Town band (which included Jansen and Coetzee), the sessions resulted in the iconic tune “Mannenberg,” recorded in June 1974. Around this time, Ibrahim coined the name As-Shams, translating to “The Sun” in Arabic, for the record label and its logo was designed by Vally’s brother-in-law, the late Abdul Kader Ali. The logo, with its big red sun and “as-shams / The Sun” with the Arabic text in between, has become one of the most iconic and easily recognizable logos for vinyl enthusiasts today.
“Basil was from Manenberg, and for us Manenberg was just symbolic of the removal out of District Six, which is actually the removal of everybody from everywhere in the world, and Manenberg specifically because … it signifies, it’s our music, and it’s our culture …” said Ibrahim in an interview about the song.
After the album came out, they took it to record companies and no one was interested. In an interview, Vally states, “The funniest thing was that after we’d finished the session, I went looking around to several big record companies to offer them distribution of the record. I was only asking them for R100 advance, and they all turned me down, saying it was too much for a group of South African musicians.”
Ibrahim had an idea to make demos and play the record and sell it at Kohinoor. Vally played it on loudspeakers outside in the street, and people entered the store wondering what that sound was. He sold 5,000 copies in the first week, without them even having covers yet or being officially released. It was an instant hit. “Mannenberg” exploded, not only in South Africa but beyond, and it became an anthem performed at massive anti-apartheid rallies which took places at universities, cinemas, even at funerals. After being licensed to Gallo, it sold more than 50,000 copies in less than a year. In exile, soldiers in the uMkhonto we Sizwe camps would play the songs on Christmas Eve and New Year’s. How the song traveled around the continent in a pre-internet time is extraordinary.
Vally continued funding recording sessions for jazz musicians, allowing them freedom in the studio, producing those records, and then selling them in Kohinoor. That sense of freedom of expression, in the height of apartheid, is evident through the brilliant music released subsequently through the label, including albums by Tete Mbambisa, Black Disco, The Beaters / Harari, Kippie Moeketsi, Lionel Pillay, Basil “Manenberg” Coetzee, Pat Matshikiza and more. He also licensed albums from jazz record labels from across the world, especially the US.
In Temple’s interview, Vally says that most of the records had fairly good success, “These were all without radio play, no support from the record companies as such, it was just by word of mouth. And to get it onto the SABC you had to fill in a hundred different forms, so we just forgot about them. It was all word of mouth.”
He continues, “In the early ’70s there was a big upsurge in local jazz music, and the normal record companies were not interested in jazz per say, they were only looking for hits. When the local artists came to me, they had complete freedom to record what they wanted.”
Valley put out about 50 records in the label’s heyday, but later put out more records in recent times like Sisonke Xonti’s uGaba the Migration (2020) and Bird Song Ensemble’s Imvuselelo (2020).
Forward ever
As-Shams is the first, and undoubtedly the best, black-owned independent label from South Africa. One that, despite odds, was hugely successful under apartheid, and one whose legacy continues today and into the future through a younger generation of DJs and crate-diggers. In 2013, when I started collecting records and DJing, coming across an As-Shams record was like encountering black gold, a rare treasure. The original records were and still are extremely hard to find. However, it was through reissues via Matsuli Music that those albums saw life again and found a new audience of post-apartheid youth. The work of As-Shams was deeply inspiring in every way to our DJ collective Future Nostalgia because of the incredible music and its role in our revolutionary history.
Fast-forward 11 years, vinyl has made a huge comeback in South Africa—with many record stores, local labels, vinyl-only parties, and DJs now part of the culture. Matsuli Music kept us on the edge of our seats, as we anticipated which rare South African gem they would be reissuing next. And in this way, finding our own sounds helped us grow a stronger identity as Africans in a post-apartheid but still highly colonized country. As Temple notes, “Today, the albums issued on the As-Shams label are highly prized by collectors, archivists and lovers of South African jazz for the freedom of spirit they capture and embody.”
Speaking of the influence on his life, record collector and DJ Boeta Gee says he first learnt about As-Shams around 1999 when purchasing two CDs from a street vendor—Black Disco’s Night Express and Abdullah Ibrahim’s Underground in Africa—and noticed they were both released by the same label. “A label I’d never heard of, but intrigued me. How was it possible that there was a record label in 1970s South Africa that had Arabic script in its name; issued two records with titles that suggested black radical activities, AND left-of-center jazz on top of it! It was only a few years later that I was able to find more information about the label’s important recorded archive of South African jazz, and the owner, Rashid Vally. This also springboarded my deeper dive into jazz from South Africa and the visual arts that often accompanied the albums.”
Vally was also a visionary in working with South African artists to create album artwork for the albums. These include artists Mafa Ngwenya (African Herbs—Dollar Brand; Tshona!—Pat Matshikiza); Winston Saoli (Dollar Brand Plays Sphere Jazz; Dollar Brand + 2; Dollar Brand + 3) and Hargreaves Ntukwana (Underground in Africa—Dollar Brand; Plum Cherry—Lionel Pillay and Basil Coetzee; Did You Tell Your Mother—Tete Mbambisa).
To the delight of many fans, a few years ago the As-Shams label was brought back to life through the work of Calum MacNaughton from Sharp-Flat, who sought Vally out over a decade ago for a license to reproduce a recording he owned. “He was reputed to be a tough businessman but I found him to be kind, engaging, and extremely generous with his time. He held a palpable spiritual grace, his knowledge of jazz was encyclopedic, and his enduring enthusiasm for South African jazz was infectious. Rashid introduced me to his archive in the basement of his former record store in downtown Johannesburg and invited me to take on the administration of the label as the vinyl renaissance of the 2010s took off and correspondence from international labels eager to discover South African jazz streamed in.”
The pair devised the As-Shams Archive as a custodian organization for the label’s cultural history, availing the catalog to imprints abroad, dabbling in new artist releases and launching a series of in-house compilations and unreleased recordings. He adds, “As-Shams Archive is Rashid Vally’s enduring legacy and his gift to South African music history. The work continues in 2025 as we bring the As-Shams Archive series to a close with a focus on saxophonist Kippie Moeketsi, Rashid’s dear friend and one of the label’s many emblematic artists.”
A gentle, passionate legend
Valley was one of 11 children. The shop was a family affair and many of his nieces and nephews spent their weekends and school holidays there. Recalling working in the shop, nephew Nazeer says, “A lot of the customers we used to encounter were township folk, and they were very refined gentlemen. They would sit for hours having chats with Uncle Rashid. He had a special way when he dealt with people, especially with his customers. He helped a lot of people realize their passion for jazz.”
He adds, “Having worked there we had to quickly learn the names of the artists, because when customers came in, we were sort of like cloned versions of Uncle Rashid … I mean, we knew the titles of spiritual music. Customers would walk in and ask us for assistance with choosing these various different types of genres. And they would take what we gave them simply because we’ve learned that from him. I remember once—you know with LPs how it was with the needle that you’ve got to place very carefully so it doesn’t scratch and jump? I remember, in the Kort Street shop, he asked me to play one of Abdullah’s LPs. I was as nervous as you can imagine, because as I’m holding that needle it’s shaking and I’m shaking uncontrollably, because he’s like towering over and he’s watching me. But he said to me, ‘Son, just calm down. Take a deep breath and just let it down gently.’ He was so cool and calm about it. And that was his nature, you know with every single thing.”
In tributes that poured in after his death, many commend his gentle, kind, and knowledgeable nature and shared beautiful memories of trips to his shop and their encounters with him. “He was never one for fame and glory. He did what he did very passionately and loved what he did. I don’t think he even realized the contribution that he’s made,” says nephew Nazeer Mohamed.
Photographer Rafs Mayet says, “I first heard about Kohinoor Records when I was a roadie / sound tech with Spirits Rejoice and Joy. Duke Makasi, Gilbert Matthews and Robbie Jansen told me about how much they enjoyed recording for Rashid, ‘We’d come out of a session, and there’d be this big pot of lekker food waiting for us in the foyer.’ ” He also shares that the last time he saw Vally was outside the old Market Street shop, “ensconced in a nice comfy chair in front of the store, enjoying the wintry sunshine. We crossed over and introduced ourselves and chatted to this unassuming man who had done so much to keep the music alive.” He noted that “Rashid showed the same respect to [the customers] as he did to musicians. He never made them feel they were imposing on him, he’d get a staff or family member to assist them, and said many of them were repeat customers who grew with his enterprise. He displayed great humility to all that he came across.”
Pops Mohamed, whose Black Disco records were released via As-Shams, shares a great memory, “The funny thing was, before I went to work at Rashid’s store, I never liked jazz. I hated jazz!” He played top-40 hits in a pop band, like langarm, Jimi Hendrix, Cliff Richard, and The Beatles. This was before he worked with indigenous instruments. But he says, “I hated jazz with a passion! The day when I started working for him, he said to me, ‘I’m going to teach you to love jazz as of today onwards.’ He mentored me to such an extent that he actually would point to an album, and he would cover the name and ask me, ‘Who is this?’ And I would guess and say ‘Dexter Gordon,’ or he would play a track on the turntable and ask me, ‘Who’s playing here?’ And I would guess and say, ‘Duke Ellington Orchestra.’ So all those little things, he was testing me. And that’s how I slowly, slowly started getting to know about jazz music. And now I have a huge collection of jazz albums in my archives, not only overseas jazz but local jazz too.”
“The one thing that people don’t know is that Rashid was a very, very dedicated and devoted Muslim brother. He had Allah in his heart all the time. From back then, Rashid was into dhikr and other Islamic practices, apart from his musical career as a record label manager, he used to go to all these dhikr sessions,” shares Pops Mohamed, who said Vally inspired him to seek spiritual knowledge too.
In Temple’s interview, Vally briefly talks about the oppression under apartheid through the Group Areas Act, Pass laws, and so on, “It was endless, you could write a whole book on that. It was very, very difficult. I mean we used to go to recording sessions on weekends, in the evenings, during business hours. We used to work late at night. There were times when I had to go to the township to pick up some of the musicians. It was very difficult, but the atmosphere was strong. And we did what we had to do.”
It was the very harsh conditions of apartheid that forced Vally to carve out his own path. While we mourn the loss of a mountain of knowledge, we continue with that spirit of freedom. He indeed lived up to the noor (light), and we will assure that his name is always remembered.
