Call for Submissions:

‘CLOSURE’ a new anthology
of contemporary Black British fiction

Internationally renowned and award winning novelist and short story writer, Jacob Ross is editing a new anthology of contemporary Black British fiction. The theme for this exciting new anthology is CLOSURE.

We want you to open up the meaning of this word to deliver a story to us.
We want the unexpected, the playful, the experimental — even the traditional.
 

Don’t allow it to dictate to you. Feel free to add to it — 'dis' it, en(d) it, move for (ward) with it – even have an open-ended closure
 

This is the situation we want you to take us to:
Essentially we want fascinating ideas expressed as good fiction.

The only definite closure we expect to see with your story is when you deliver it —by 31 July 2013.

Only 30 stories will be included so we will not be holding the door to this date open after 31st July. Make sure you own it and close it on this date.

Here are some possible triggers to get you going;
CLOSURE:

• approaching a particular destination

• a coming closer

• a narrowing of a gap
 

• approaching — the act of drawing spatially closer to something
 

• closure imposed on the debate of specific sections of a bill
 

• deciding, decision making
 

• to clear a blockage or obstruction
 

• a metal block in breech-loading firearms that is withdrawn to insert a cartridge and replaced to close the breech before firing
 

• obstruction, obstructor, impediment — any thing that makes progress difficult
 

• the act of blocking
 

• termination of operations, closedown, shutdown
 

• the act of ending something
 

• Enclosure
 

• Disclosure
 

• Opening
 

• End of business
 

• Point of rest
 

• Finality
 

• Vertical distance of rock formation
 

• Being close set in mathematics
 

• Contact between vocal organs producing sound

Closure is open to submissions from Black British writers. Our definition is broad. Visit the Peepal Tree Press website or the Inscribe Facebook page for our guidelines, which is simply one of self-identification i.e., if you are a writer ‘of colour’ born, raised, living, or have lived in Britain and ‘self identify’ as Black British, then we welcome your submission.

Guidelines for submissions:

Stories of a minimum 1500 words; maximum 4,000 words
Any style of fiction (no memoir; no poetry)
Writers of any age or gender can submit work
Work must be new, previously unpublished fiction.

Deadline for submissions: 31 July 2013
How To Prepare Your Manuscript
 

• Single-sided A4
 

• Double spaced
 

• Wide margins either side
 

• Name and title on each page of the story
 

• Font size — 12 point
 

• Serif font (for example Times New Roman, Cambria or similar)
 

• No pdf’s
 

• Printed on white paper only
 
How to Submit Your Story
Send one hard copy of your story along with one hard copy of your 100 word biography to :

Each writer can send a maximum of two stories. (All of the terms, rules and conditions apply to each story).

Closure – Inscribe Anthology
Kadija George
Series Editor, Inscribe/Peepal Tree Press, 17 King’s Ave, Leeds, LS6 1QS
Please note that work will not be returned so please do not send your only copy

Send one copy by email by 31 July to:
 

• kadija.inscribe@peepaltreepress.com
 

• in the subject Line: Closure – Title of Story – Your Name

• do not use headers or footers in the text

(The hard copy can follow but must reach us by 3rd August 2013. Both copies must be the same. If your story is selected we will be using the hard copies to read from and edit. The emailed submission will also serve as a backup.)

Receipt of your story will be acknowledged by (Monday 5th August 2013), once we have received both the emailed story and the hard copy version.

Remember: The final date for submission is 31 July 2013!

The anthology will be published by Peepal Tree Press in Autumn 2014, under their ‘Inscribe’ imprint. Inscribe is the developmental arm of Peepal Tree Press which focuses on publishing chap books and anthologies of groundbreaking new work by writers of African and Asian descent in the UK. Since April, Yorkshire based Inscribe became an organisation with a national remit.

The Closure anthology will consist of new work from established Black British writers residing inside and outside the UK. These include writers who have made Britain their home, as well as the new, fresh and exciting new writers who have recently emerged and will continue to emerge as we work with them around the country.

Note on the editor:
Jacob Ross is the Associate Fiction Editor for Peepal Tree Press, a novelist, short story writer, a tutor of Narrative Craft and the Fiction Editor for SABLE LitMag. He is the author of acclaimed short story collections, Song for Simone (1986) and A Way to Catch the Dust (1999); co-editor of Voice, Memory, Ashes (1998); co-author of Behind the Masquerade: The Story of Notting Hill Carnival (1986); Ridin’ n Risin and Turf - Anthologies of short stories with Andrea Enisuoh. He also edited Artrage, Britain's leading Intercultural Arts magazine.

Jacob Ross is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature has judged the V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize, the Tom-Gallon Award and Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize. His first novel, Pynter Bender was a 2008 Book Of The Year - Caribbean Review of Books, Shortlisted Authors Club Best First Novel Award 2009, Shortlisted Commonwealth Writers Prize 2009.

NB: Visit the Inscribe Facebook page to find out when and how to attend a Fiction Masterclass taught by Peepal Tree Press’s Associate Fiction Editor, Jacob Ross. These Masterclasses will be run around the country well before the submission deadline (between October 2012 and June 2013) to enable writers to develop their craft before submitting a story. You are advised to sign-up for the Inscribe mailing list through the Peepal Tree Press website as spaces will be limited and will be filled on a first come, first served basis.

kadija.inscribe@peepaltreepress.com

Find out more about INSCRIBE and what we do for Black & Asian writers in the UK

INSCRIBE, Peepal Tree Press, 17 King's Avenue, Leeds LS6 1QS, United Kingdom
+44 (0)113 2451703

via peepaltreepress.com

Our prizes target and identify talented writers from different regions of the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth Book Prize (CBP) is awarded for the best first book, and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize (CSSP) for the best piece of unpublished short fiction.

For each prize we award four regional winners and one overall winner. The regions are Africa; Asia; Canada & Europe; Caribbean; and the Pacific.

The prizes are open to Commonwealth citizens aged 18 or over.

The 2013 prizes are now open for entry via the online entry form.

• Commonwealth Book Prize 
  • 2013 Judges 
  • 2013 Prize 
  • Past Judges 
  • 2013 Entry rules 
  • Book Prize FAQs 
  • Submit an entry 
• Commonwealth Short Story Prize 
  • 2013 Judges 
  • 2013 Prize 
  • Past Judges 
  • 2013 Entry rules 
  • Short Story Prize FAQs
  • Submit an entry

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Commonwealth Book Prize

Awarded for best first book, this prize is open to writers who have had their first novel (full length work of fiction) published between 1 January and 31 December 2012. Self-published authors are eligible to enter. Regional winners receive £2,500 and the overall winner receives £10,000.

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Commonwealth Short Story Prize

Awarded for the best piece of unpublished short fiction (2000 – 5000 words). Submissions must be made by the author of the short story. Regional winners receive £1,000 and the overall winner receives £5,000.

The Question of the Social Sciences:

A Small Axe Essay Competition

By ARC Magazine Saturday, November 3rd, 2012

 

Small Axe is keen to encourage work in the critical and interpretive social sciences. They are interested in the ways in which such disciplines as anthropology, economics, political science, psychology, and sociology seek to grapple with the regional and diasporic Caribbean. This interest stems partly from the fact that the social sciences have been central, historically, to the construction of the ”Caribbean” as an object of scholarly inquiry, and central therefore to what we understand the problems are that require investigation and interpretation.

 

Small Axe essay call

 

But in the past several decades there has been a considerable disciplinary upheaval (engendered by the rise, for example, of poststructuralism, postcolonial studies, and cultural studies) such that the character of the social sciences has altered, and perhaps also social science modes of engaging and constructing the Caribbean.

This Small Axe essay competition seeks to encourage scholarship that engages the social sciences in a critical and historically informed way. We welcome manuscripts from across and between the disciplines that interrogate but also mobilize these disciplines. Small Axe is especially interested in the work of individuals at early stages in their scholarly careers.

Deadline for submissions is 15 November 2012. The selected essay will be published in Small Axe in 2013. All essays have to adhere to a length not more than 7,000 words. Submit essays and queries to: socialscience@smallaxe.net and for more information visit www.smallaxe.net

An Interview with

Tato Laviera, the King of

Nuyorican Poetical Migrations

By Odilia Rivera Santos

This interview originally appeared on Latino Rebels site

http://www.latinorebels.com/2012/07/11/an-interview-with-tato-laviera-the-king-of-nuyorican-poetical-migrations/

Tato Laviera stands up from his seat, backstage at Symphony Space, with the help of a beautiful woman in a red dress. She patiently tells him what lies ahead; he asks another woman if he can place his hand on her shoulder. They walk into the bright light onstage, and together, the two women guide Mr. Laviera to his seat in the middle of the stage, flanked by Arturo O’ Farrill and The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra and Mr. Laviera’s personally-selected backup singers. Although legally blind, he has a keen awareness of his audience and his own presence. Mr. Laviera’s performance, blending poetry and his original Guaracha composed with Bill Ware, is the highlight of the evening. Mr. Laviera dedicates this poem/song to the memory of Celia Cruz, the AfroCuban icon with whom Mr. Laviera felt a kinship because of her artistry, exile and survival skills.

Again, there is blinding light and Tato is in the center, but this time, he is comfortably seated in his new digs at The Taíno Towers in Spanish Harlem. The large windows in the living room let in enough light to make of his living room a tropical island in the middle of the city. After a serious illness and search for a new home in 2010, Mr. Laviera has adapted to a new community and to new methods of writing. This is a process he explored in his first published work in the 1960s in which he explored physical and linguistic hybridization and migrations: La carreta made a u-turn.

He writes everyday, but since losing his sight, he has had to think everything out and be prepared to speak it all when a typist comes in.

All black&white Photos of Tato Laviera, Copyright: Rebecca Beard, http://RebeccaBeard.com

To speak to Tato Laviera is to observe a lifelong performance in which he has attempted to reconcile the two cultures which have most influenced his work — that of Puerto Rico, his country of origin and the Lower East Side, the adopted country. He speaks in Spanish and English and Spanglish while telling stories of life here and there.

Speaking of his childhood in Puerto Rico, Laviera begins with his first beating at the hands of his mother, sister, brother and father.

“My first paliza was given to be by my mother, sister, father and brother because I escaped from the house to go to the hotel in San Juan that was denying Rafael Cortijo the right to play on a Saturday night. It was in the 1950s — my brothers and sisters were going to the demonstration. I wanted to go too. I got lost and I was crying.”

Tato Laviera’s father was a serious character; he was an engineer, a nationalist and disciplinarian. And he carried a gun. He was amused by his son’s independence.

“For believing in justice. . .  I got my first paliza. I was five. Decían que era ‘un negrito inteligente’”

His involvement with the church in Puerto Rico made his transition to the mainland easier.

“In the church, they liked the way I recited Latin. I was an altar boy for the bishop in San Juan and he wrote a letter I took to New York, so I was serving mass the second week in NYC.  I didn’t speak English, but I had a position of importance.”

Tato Laviera does not speak of a deprived childhood, but one in which he was encouraged to pursue his interests and the biggest difficulty involved dealing with bullies in New York City. But like many Puerto Ricans, he learned to use hardship to better himself. He became a great dancer in order to get respect in the community and female attention; he won the first Latin Dance competition in Manhattan.

 

He lived in four places without his parents but enjoyed the experience because he was ‘left in good company.’ His father was a philosopher and his mother a writer. She wrote letters to her sisters in meticulous handwriting, highly-structured language, and there were hidden messages — secrets kept between sisters. All her letters were lost in the 1960s.

The transition from Puerto Rico to New York City came with some warnings.

Laviera moved to Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn and his aunt greeted him with the words:

No te juntes con los negros.

And he didn’t quite understand because he was Black as well. But it was amatter of culture and language, not race.

 

The Black and Hispanic kids in the neighborhood beat him up, and Laviera learned to leave the building running. The bullies would chase him to Ave C.

“Sometimes, they were smart enough to wait for me on Ave C and beat my ass up. I was saved by a negrito named Mongue..”

Mongue, a kid Laviera believed to be African-American, was actually Puerto Rican or in Laviera’s words “the first Nuyorican I ever met.”

He didn’t know Mongue spoke Spanish until he sang El negro bembón on Avenue D in perfect Spanish.

Life in the Lower East Side was different but he made some connections with the island through music and language.

“In the Lower East Side, the Puerto Ricans had already been ‘project-ed.’ The people were used to living in the projects. They worked on ships on South Street or in hotels.

There were a lot of people collecting records, so music became a really important connection between New York City and Puerto Rico. We spoke English in the street and Spanish at home. A lot of music from Puerto Rico was played in the streets and in people’s homes. We listened to Bomba, Plena, pop music and Salsa.”

Music was as big a literary influence as the written word.

One of Laviera’s biggest literary influences is Luis Palés Matos.

Laviera’s uncle took the nine-year-old to Parada 21 in Santurce to a literary event at which Luis Palés Matos recited poetry. Inspired by Matos, Laviera began to listen to popular songs and change the lyrics, using the music as inspiration for his own words and internal rhythms.

In regards to recitation style, Jorge Brandon, who has been called the father of the Nuyorican movement, was an early influence as well.

“My play The King of Cans is written in highly stylized Nuyorican English with some literary considerations. The moment of inspiration defines the language… of 220 poems, fifty percent are in English, twenty-five percent in Spanish and the rest are bilingual or Spanglish.”

The King of Cans is a musical which takes place in New York City and tells the story of homeless can collectors who strive to rebuild their lives while dealing with day-to-day survival on the streets.

Laviera feels linguistic invention is a big part of the artistic process and one he claims with pride:

“Puerto Rico in particular intertwines Caribbean Black Spanish. We dare to claim it. It is a source of pride and we are not linguistically crippled. My claim to fame is I can experiment, and sound intelligent with my linguistic experiments.”

Tato Laviera alternates between producing a book of poems and a play. King of Cans is Laviera’s 16th play and he finds the characters through poetry. His creative process requires he write poems as a framework for larger work and the deeper exploration of a character.

He considers the most exciting part of being an artist to be the completion of a goal. He feels an urgency to compete one work and dive right into another project. As his play gets closer to its performance dates in July, he looks forward to returning to the novel.

“Art . . . la brega. It’s never easy. You have to be married to it — sustain its wounds and criticisms. And the people with no vision and technical skills and vice versa. And some who are not satisfied with anything — critics.”

Tato Laviera has a catalog of 45 songs for plays and King of Cans has seven new songs.

He says the play is really a musical and something he’s always meant to do — write more and more musicals. The show with Arturo O’Farrill and The Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra was a graduation of sorts for Laviera. And he hopes to do the performance again.

“I write music with my mouth — first lyrics, then song, then rhythm.”

After the play, he will return to his novel entitled Spanish Harlem, which has five parts and he has already completed four. The eight hundred pages of Spanish Harlem await his return and full focus. But, right now, the play is the thing and handling the vagaries of a theatrical production in which he is fully engaged.

Tato Laviera is alive and well and making art and quite settled in Spanish Harlem even as he speaks of the ‘interminable Puerto Rican migration.’ He believes himself to be a child of Puerto Rico, the Lower East Side and Spanish Harlem. And he is not one prone to self-pity or sadness, because as he states several times during the interview, “I am in love with the moment. It is the moment …right now that counts.”

Tato Laviera Bibliography

Enciclopediapr.org

Amazon

 

November:

The Month of

Black Consciousness

in Brazil.

Video of

Afro-Brazilian historical figures

 

Today is the first day of November, which is recognized as the Month of Black Consciousness in Brazil. November 20th is the national Day of Black Consciousness. As such, watch this video and become acquainted with some of the names of Afro-Brazilian History. In the video you will see all sorts of people: actors, musicians and singers, abolitionists, doctors, engineers, poets, athletes, etc. A few of the women are featured here on Black Women of Brazil. Stay tuned to the blog; in the future we will feature more of the women you see in this video!

One correction: At the 34 second mark, a photo is listed as poet Castro Alves, but it is actually another photo of the man in the previous photo, writer Machado de Assis.

The song is "Sentinela" by the great Milton Nascimento along with Nana Caymmi, who is the daughter of the legendary singer/musician/composer Dorival Caymmi, featured at the 3:24 mark.

Below is a listing of the people featured in the photos of the video in the order that they appear. Of course, each of them have their own stories and biographies that time restraints don't permit at this time. But feel free to Google them; while many biographies only have information in Portuguese, some of these figures have bios in English also!

This is only a small of list of the thousands of Brazilians of African descent who have made important contributions to Brazilian society. Since the making of this video, one of the most important figures of Afro-Brazilian History passed away in 2011: Abdias do Nascimento, who was cited in Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African-American Experience, as the most complete intellectual of African descent in the 20th century.

Zumbi dos Palmares, 17th century leader of Quilombo of Palmares. Most celebrated Afro-Brazilian hero

Anastácia, slave and popular saint of the 18th century venerated in Brazil

Padre José Maurício Nunes Garcia, Classical music composer of the 18th/19th century

Luis Gama, 19th century poet, journalist, lawyer and abolitionist. 

José Carlos do Patrocínio, 19th/20th century writer, journalist, activist, orator and pharmacist.

Cruz e Souza, 19th century writer

Lima Barretto, 19th/20th century novelist and journalist

Aleijadinho, 18th/19th century sculptor and architect

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, 19th/20th century novelist, poet, playwright, short story writer

Castro Alves (wrong photo), 19th century poet and playwright, famous for his abolitionist poems

André Pinto Rebouças, 19th century military engineer, abolitionist and inventor

João Cândido (Felisberto), 19th/20th century sailor, best known as the leader of the "Revolt of the Whip."

Juliano Moreira, 19th/20th century pioneer of Brazilian psychiatry

Chiquinha Gonzaga, 19th/20th century composer, pianist and conductor

Arthur Timótheo da Costa, 19th/20th century painter, draftsman, designer, engraver, decorator

Auta de Souza, 19th/20th century poet

Benjamin de Oliveira, 19th/20th century artist, composer actor and circus clown

Tia Ciata, 19th/20th century cook and mãe de santo of the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé

Antonieta de Barros, jouralist and politician; first black female state deputy of Brazil

Donga (or Ernesto Joaquim Maria dos Santos), 19th/20th century musician, composer and guitarist

Sinhô, 20th century Samba composer

Ataulfo Alves, 20th century Samba singer and composer

Blecaute (Otávio Henrique de Oliveira), 20th century singer and composer

Moreira da Silva, 20th century Samba singer/composer

Dolores Duran, 20th century singer and composer

Isaura Bruno, first black woman protagonist on a Brazilian novela

Pixinguinha (Alfredo da Rocha Viana, Jr.), 20th century composer, arranger, flautist, saxophonist

Nelson Cavaquinho, one of the most important Samba singer/composers of the 20th century

Agostinho dos Santos, 20th century singer and composer of Bossa Nova, MPB and Rock and Roll

Jacira Sampaio, actress

Cartola, one of Brazil's most celebrated Samba singer/composers

Mãe Menininha do Gantois, one of the most important mães-de-santo of Afro-Brazilian religion

Jackson Do Pandeiro,  percussionist, singer and composer of Brazilian Forró, Samba, Xote and Coco

Didi (Waldir Pereira), soccer star of Brazil's World Cup victories of 1958 and 1962

Jorge Veiga, Samba singer and composer

Mestre Pastinha (Vicente Joaquim Ferreira Pastinha) a mestre of the Afro-Brazilian martial art Capoeira

Cyro Monteiro, singer/composer
 

Eliezer Gomes, one of the great actors of Brazilian cinema
 

Luiz Gonzaga, legendary singer/composer/musician of Brazilian Forró
 

Jovelina Perola Negra, one of the great singer of Samba
 

Mané Garrincha, soccer star who helped Brazil win the World Cups of '58 and 1962
 

Milton Santos, Geographer
 

Candeia, Samba singer/composer
 

Grande Otelo, considered of Brazil's greatest actors
 

Solano Trindade, poet, folklorist, painter, actor, and filmmaker
 

Wilson Simonal, Brazilian Popular Music singer
 

Baden Powell, one of Brazil's most prominent and celebrated guitarists. Also a singer and composer.
 

João do Pulo (João Carlos de Oliveira), Olympic athlete of the long jump
 

Clementina de Jesus, important Samba singer

Tim Maia, Brazilian Popular Music singer and pioneer of Brazilian Soul music

Mussum, actor, comedian

Carolina de Jesus, former slum dweller gained famed who gained fame after the publication of her book

Elizeth Cardoso, Brazilian Popular Music singer

Jorge Lafond, actor, dancer and comedian of TV, theatre and film

Lélia Gonzalez, intellectual, professor, anthropologist and politician. Important Afro-Brazilian activist

João Nogueira, important singer/composer of Samba and Popular Music

João do Vale, musician, singer/composer

Tião Macale (Moisés Bruno dos Santos Gregório), comedian

Dorival Caymmi, One of Brazil's most important singer/songwriter/musicians

Paulão

João Paulo

Carmen Costa (Carmelita Madriaga), singer/composer

Claudinho, singer of the Brazilian Funk duo Claudinho & Buchecha

Norton Nascimento, actor

Luiz Carlos da Vila, Samba singer/composer

Haroldo de Oliveira, actor

Adhemar Ferreira da Silva, first Brazilian athlete win two gold medals in the Olympics (1952, 1956)

Jacyra Silva, actress

Breno Mello, actor best known for his portrayal of Orfeu in the 1959 film Orfeu Negro

Ismael Silva, Samba singer/composer

Roberto Ribeiro, Samba singer/composer

Pena Branca and Xavantinho, singing duo of Caipira music

Noite Ilustrada (Mário Sousa Marques Filho), singer/composer/guitarist

Chocolate (Dorival Silva), actor, comedian, composer

Zizinho (Thomaz Soares da Silva), soccer star who rose to prominence in the 1950 World Cup

Walter Alfaiate, Samba singer/composer

Jamelão (José Bispo Clementino dos Santos), Samba singer

Leônidas da Silva, one of the most important soccer players of the first half of the 20th century

Zé Keti (José Flores de Jesus), Singer/composer of Samba

Tim Lopes (Arcanjo Antonino Lopes do Nascimento), investigative reporter

Moacir Santos, composer, multi-instrumentalist and music educator

Dona Zica (Euzébia Silva do Nascimento), Samba singer and wife of singer/composer Cartola

Dona Neuma (Neuma Gonçalves da Silva), Carnaval personality of Mangueira Samba School

Johnny Alf (Alfredo José da Silva), musician who some consider to be the father of Bossa Nova

Bezerra da Silva, Samba musician of the partido alto style

Xangô da Mangueira (Olivério Ferreira), Samba singer/composer

Seu Nenê de Vila Matilde, founder and ex-president of the Nenê de Vila Matilde Samba School

Paulo Moura, Samba, Jazz and Choro composer, arranger, saxophonist and clarinetist

 

Posted by Gatas Negras

 

In this film, which is shot in New York and Cape Town, the life history of South African-born jazz singer, Sathima Bea Benjamin, unfolds through her own reflections and reminiscence, which are woven together with the music she has created and with the reflections of five people who know her work and the milieu which shaped it. In her flat in the Chelsea Hotel in New York, where she has lived for thirty two years, Sathima patches together her journeys, literal and figurative, from Apartheid South Africa and 'the pattern of brokenness' from which she hailed, to Europe and a chance meeting and recording with Duke Ellington, to starting afresh and setting up her own record company in New York. The film is a celebration of Sathima's work and a meditation on jazz and diaspora. As it moves back and forth between Cape Town and New York, to the lyrics and rhythm of her music, it becomes, much like the title of her haunting song, Windsong, a reflection on history, time and place; on Apartheid, anti-Apartheid and their legacies, as well as the passionate questions of memory, displacement and belonging.

Sathima Benjamin,

jazz and

postwar “modern” Africa

November 1, 2012

By Sean Jacobs 

Recently the life and career of the South African jazz singer Sathima Bea Benjamin has been the subject of both popular and scholarly attention. In the last two years alone, she’s been the subject of an excellent documentary film (“Sathima’s Windsong” by anthropologist Daniel Yon) and she is one of four jazz musicians profiled in Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times, a new book by American historian Robin D. G. Kelley that interrogates the links and influences between American jazz and postwar “modern” Africa. (The other artists featured in the book are Ghanaian drummer Guy Warren and the African-Americans Randy Weston and Ahmed Abdul Malik.) Most significantly, Benjamin has now collaborated with University of Pennsylvania music professor Carol Muller to produce a book-length study of Benjamin’s life and career, Musical Echoes: South African Women Thinking in Jazz.

Muller (also a South African) and Benjamin wanted to ensure that “both the biographical and the geographical coexist[ed]” in the book. The book is structured like a “musical echo”; it uses “a kind of call and response method.” So each chapter consists of a recounting of Sathima’s life (“the call”), followed by Muller’s reflection (“the response”). Muller, though, takes responsibility as the primary author. (The book is the result of 20 years worth of interviews and archival research.)

Benjamin, born in 1936 in Johannesburg and raised in Cape Town, left South Africa in 1963 to forge a music career in Europe and then in the United States alongside her husband, the great jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim. Muller credits Benjamin with “discovering” Ibrahim; while in Switzerland, Benjamin introduced Ibrahim (still known as Dollar Brand at the time) to Duke Ellington, who recorded Ibrahim’s trio of South African musicians (minus Benjamin) in Paris, thus launching Ibrahim’s international career.

Ellington also recorded Benjamin, but the recording was never publicly released. For long periods the recordings were feared lost, but were found in 1997 and released to critical acclaim as “Morning in Paris.”

That album, and a 2000 recording “Cape Town Love”, recorded with a group of older Cape Town musicians, serve as bookends to Musical Echoes. 

In-between we get frank and rich recollections by Benjamin of her early life—she was at times physically and sexually abused as a child and had a nervous breakdown; and her family did not warm to Ibrahim, whose father was Sotho. We also read about Benjamin’s marriage to the talented and at times dominating Ibrahim; what it was like to be a woman in the jazz world (Benjamin raised two children—her daughter is the rapper Jean Grae and her son is an artist—while running her own label and recording her own music). Her self-imposed exile, the anti-apartheid struggle, and censorship (her most productive period coincided with Apartheid in South Africa) are all covered in stages.

The sections on Benjamin’s childhood and early adulthood double as something of a social history of coloured cultural and social life in Cape Town before the National Party came to power in 1948. The book contains a rich description of talent concerts, dance bands, jazz clubs, and the impact of radio, records and cinema on Benjamin’s imagination and musical education.

While Benjamin was classified as coloured, she rejected that label; instead emphasizing her cosmopolitanism, including her family roots in St Helena, a small island in the South Atlantic as well her connection to New York City, her home from 1977.

While in exile, Benjamin’s racial identity (Muller describes Benjamin at one point as “a women of ambiguous racial marking”) and the fact that she sings in English, complicated her position. The exiled ANC would often exclude her from singing at their events because she was “not African enough” and American music executives and promoters preferred the equally talented Miriam Makeba singing in “exotic” African languages.

The book (part of a Duke book series on “Refiguring American Music”) contributes to a growing literature on the intersection of US-South African cultural politics and history (see, for example the work of Rob Nixon, Robert Vinson, James Campbell and younger scholars like Tyler Fleming). Musical Echoes also contains sections on South African musicians and Cold War politics. Muller reveals Benjamin and Ibrahim’s entanglements with the CIA-sponsored Transcription Center in London—“the most significant site for South African musicians, artists and writers”—throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. Sathima was “not enthusiastic” about revealing these connections.

Muller has preoccupations similar to Robin Kelley’s: both aim to complicate jazz history by showing how Africans reshaped American jazz in the twentieth century. For Muller, Benjamin’s transnational travels and influences “constitute a worldwide, comparative, and more equitable representation of jazz historiography” from the “margins of jazz history. The aim is not to read jazz cultures—in the US and elsewhere—in parallel, but “to put jazz cultures in dialogue with each other.” Muller describes Benjamin as “a voice that is incessantly in exile,” negotiating a complicated relationship with New York City, where she lived and performed for much of her professional life, and Cape Town, where she started her career and where she recently returned to live.

* This is an edited version of a review first published in The International Journal of African Historical Studies.