I have no concrete reason for today’s choice. It may be a combination of the cheering effect that African music has on me, especially in times like these past several days, when illness seems to have settled for good in the house, and a whole lot of little things I’ve read or heard recently about the way people manage to divide themselves into ‘them and us’, as if coexisting all together were a scarier prospect than constant bickering for no apparent reason.
Either way, here’s a white South African who dared perform with black bands, back in the apartheid years, when he could have paid very dearly for flouting what was state law at the time. That, people, takes a lot of gumption – risking one’s freedom, or life, even, literally for a song (or a hundred). The video for ‘Scatterlings Of Africa’, particularly, makes me tear up.
