Mango Groove is an 11-piece South African Afropop band whose music fuses pop and township music—especially marabi and kwela.

Since its foundation in 1984, the band has released six studio albums and numerous singles.

Mango Groove formed in Johannesburg in 1984. Three of the four founding members—John Leyden, Andy Craggs, and Bertrand Mouton—were bandmates in a "white middle-class punk band" called Pett Frog, while they were students at the University of the Witwatersrand. In 1984 the three young men met kwela musician "Big Voice" Jack Lerole at the Gallo Records building in Johannesburg. In the late 1950s, Lerole had led a kwela band called Elias and His Zig-Zag Jive Flutes. John Leyden was enamored with South African jazz of this era. Lerole's reputation preceded him. He and the boys from Pett Frog rehearsed together, and a new band started to take shape. The band's name was invented over dinner: a pun on the phrase "Man, go groove!".

In Mango Groove's early days, musicians came and went as the group evolved into a cohesive whole. Leyden was the only founding member who has stayed on since the very beginning, but the full roster eventually swelled to 11 members. Alan Lazar, a composer, and arranger who became the band's keyboardist, explains that a big band with diverse musical elements allows for a variety of arrangements. For most of the band's history, it has comprised four vocalists, lead and bass guitar, a brass section, drums, keyboards, and the penny whistle. (The penny whistle is the central instrument in kwela music—a Southern African style that has strongly influenced the Mango Groove's sound.) Lead singer Claire Johnston's soprano is complemented by backing vocalists Beulah Hashe, Marilyn Nokwe, and Phumzile Ntuli.

Guitarist and longtime member George Lewis joined in 1984. He, John Leyden, Kevin Botha, Jack Lerole, and Simon "Mahlathini" Nkabinde co-wrote "Dance Some More", which was the first song Mango Groove recorded. The band had not yet found their singers, and this seminal recording was fronted by Jack Lerole and the Mahotella Queens. Johnston joined when she was 17. She was receiving voice instruction from Eve Boswell at the time. Bertrand Moulton called Boswell in 1984 and asked her to refer her best female singer, and she recommended Claire Johnston. Leyden met Johnston for the first time in Rosebank, a suburb of Johannesburg. She played him some tapes of her singing and went to see the band perform. "I was intrigued because I'd never heard anything like Mango Groove." After a month with no word from the band, Johnston received a phone call from Leyden who asked if she could rehearse for a show booked two nights later.

When Johnston graduated from secondary school, she—like Leyden, Craggs, and Moulton before her—enrolled at the University of the Witwatersrand. She completed a Bachelor of Arts degree while touring with the band.[citation needed] She and John Leyden married in 1999, and divorced more than a decade later.

The band's first studio recording with Claire Johnston was "Two Hearts", which they released as a single in 1985. The band at this time had seven members: John Leyden (bass guitar), Sarah Pontin (alto sax and clarinet), Banza Kgasoane (trumpet), Mickey Vilakazi (trombone), Sipho Bhengu (tenor sax), and George Lewis (guitar). On the back of the record jacket were a sales pitch introducing potential listeners to the band and their ethos. Nicholas Hauser, who wrote the copy, described "Two Hearts" as a "beatbox township waltz" that blends music of different traditions. The band's first hit came in 1987: "Move Up", which was released on 7-inch record in an edition of 4,000, reached number one on the Capital Radio hit parade.

Some of the band's other former members are drummer Peter Cohen, trumpeter Banza Kgasoane, composer/keyboardist Alan Lazar, penny whistler Kelly Petlane, keyboardist Les Blumberg, and trombonist Mickey Vilakazi. Before his stint with Mango Groove, Cohen co-founded the South African pop-rock band Bright Blue; he later joined Freshlyground (est. 2003), a six-person fusion ensemble that has been compared with Mango Groove.

Alto saxophonist and clarinetist Sarah Pontin left the band in 1986. Mduduzi Magwaza eventually took her place on the alto saxophone; he also plays the penny whistle.

Alan Lazar joined on as Mango Groove's keyboardist not long after the band's formation. He co-wrote some of their first songs, including the 1985 single "Two Hearts". In the mid-1990s he started producing scores for film and television and won a scholarship from the United States' Fulbright Foreign Student Program. After earning a Master of Fine Arts degree from the USC School of Cinema-Television in 1997, he settled in the US and continued his career in the Greater Los Angeles Area.

"Big Mickey" Vilakazi, a World War II veteran, was also an early member of the band. He was 65 when he joined; John Leyden recalled that when Vilakazi died in June 1988, it seemed for a time that the band might break up.

Mango's longtime trumpeter, Banza Kgasoane, died 9 December 2015, age 65. At the funeral service in Alexandra, Claire Johnston, John Leyden, and other musicians joined Kgasoane's son Moshe on-stage to perform a tribute to Banza. Moshe, like his father, took up the trumpet; he performs as Mo-T with the band Mi Casa. On 21 December, South Africa's Minister of Arts and Culture Nathi Mthethwa memorialised Kgasoane in a press statement issued by the Department.

In July 1989, a year after Mickey Vilakazi's death, the band released their first studio album: Mango Groove. Four of the album's eleven songs had previously been released as singles: "Two Hearts" in 1985, "Love Is (the Hardest Part)" in 1986, and "Do You Dream of Me?" and "Move Up" in 1987. After the album's release, three more songs were released as singles: "Hellfire", "Dance Sum More", and "Special Star". Mango's debut album stayed in the top 20 of the Radio Orion national album chart for a year and peaked at number 2. This was the longest that any album had maintained such a rank on Orion's chart. However, when Phil Collins released …But Seriously a few months later—an album that had some anti-apartheid themes—it demonstrated a similar staying power. (Radio Orion itself was a national FM radio station operated by the South African Broadcasting Corporation. It operated only at night, with a format that included "a wide variety of music, phone-in shows, and topical discussion.")

Mango Groove was followed by Hometalk in 1990, Another Country in 1993, and Eat a Mango in 1995. In South Africa, each of these was released by Tusk Music—or by its One World Entertainment imprint. Hometalk went gold as soon as it was released in South Africa (it has since reached platinum status). After Eat a Mango, the band released compilation albums, but they did not put out another studio album until Bang the Drum in 2009. "We took a break," Claire Johnston told an interviewer shortly after Bang the Drum's release. "I wanted to do some solo things and get some of those frustrations and aspirations out of my system.… We just put Mango Groove on the back burner.… [W]e all did our own things, while still getting back together for the odd Mango Groove concert." In a 2014 interview, Johnston elaborated: "We experienced a creative lull. It happens to everyone; and I really learned a lot about myself during that time. I joined Mango Groove at such a young age, I needed to go out on my own and explore…".

During this period, Johnston released her first solo album, Fearless (2001), and a cover album called Africa Blue (2004). She also recorded the song "Together as One (Kanye Kanye)" with Jeff Maluleke in 2003; John Leyden was the producer. Johnston and Maluleke later recorded an album together: Starehe: An African Day (2006), and Leyden produced albums for other artists.[32] Sax and penny whistle player Mduduzi "Duzi" Magwaza also released an album, Boerekwela (2005), and accompanied the Soweto String Quartet on their world tour. An impetus for Mango Groove to record together again came after the band launched their website in 2007: Fans kept asking when they would release a new album.

Between 1989 and 2009, the band sold more than 700,000 albums in South Africa; that number eventually surpassed one million.