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Hugh Masekela - Still Grazing
Anyone seen this one? I just picked it up at Borders - I'm far from an expert on Masakela, but his story is long and looks fascinating, so I can't wait to read it.
Also, it has one of the best opening paragraphs I've read in a long time - this was what drove me to actually drop bread on this one:
"I grew up in a small town in South Africa named Witbank, a one-street, redneck, right-wing Afrikaner town, surrounded by coal mines and coal trains with endless carriages and coal-packed containers crisscrossing the horizon, pulled by steam engines we called 'Mankalanyana,' churning smoke up into the air. I remember seeing women in the mornings and at sunset running alongside the coal trains with large tin cups collecting the coal nuggets that fell from the cars. It was a town where African miners drank themselves stuporous to blot out memory of the blackness of the mines and the families and lands they'd left behind, often never to see again. But even when the burning coal and dust blackened out the sun, we still had music to sing our sorrow and illuminate our ecstasy."
It's hard to beat writing like that, IMHO.
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