Mbaqanga Nights - Leonora Meriel

Mbaqanga Nights

By: Leonora Meriel

Hardcover | 1 February 2025

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1989. 

The African Jazz Pioneers are in full swing. Coltrane's club is hopping. Glasses and plates are pushed aside as the room dances.

What's so special?

Look around. The faces are black, brown and white. It's Durban, South Africa. It's apartheid. It's illegal.

When a pair of young music lovers decide to follow their dreams and open a jazz club to showcase the musicians whose irrepressible songs they have grown up with, they have little idea of what stark choices they will be facing as the political situation heats up and riots tear through the surrounding townships. With an epic tale that starts in the depths of a Ukrainian shtetl and winds its way back and forth across oceans, history and memory serve to create a personal story of individual choice - and the fate of nations.

"A time-jumping... story of oppression and resilience" - Kirkus Reviews

Industry Reviews

"A wholly original take on matters of history, identity and life, one that is timely, engaging and finely crafted" - Philippe Sands, author of "East West Street: Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize"

"Meriel displays... commanding knowledge of Ukrainian and South African history" - Kirkus Reviews

"Meriel's kaleidoscopic composition shakes together the frozen darkness of Eastern Europe, the blinding glare of Durban, the dread of pogroms and township faction fights, the exultation of jazz and the trials and triumphs of a few hard living and brave young South African whites who made a go of an impossible business" - Darius Brubeck

"As a jazz improvisation, Mbaqanga Nights moves from the funny to the sombre to the poignant to the joyous. Its catchy motifs fuse Cossack songs, Zulu rhythms, and Yiddish jokes. Once you discover what jazz mean to the South Africans in the midst of apartheid, you will discover freedom" -Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, author of "The Golden Age Shtetl: A New History of Jewish Life in East Europe"

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