Bongani madondo biography of william
Sigh the Beloved Country: Braai Talk, Rock ‘n’ Roll & Other Stories
Bongani Madondo
Picador Africa, 2016
Load up on guns, bring your friends
It’s fun to lose and to pretend
She’s over bored and self assured
Oh no, I know a dirty word
—Nirvana, Smells like Teen SpiritI’m a black writer by choice and by experience.
—Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’oA little magazine is like the start of a river … We don’t know how long they will live, and they often disappear; but better to disappear than to become a bad magazine.
—Etel Adnan, ‘On Small Magazines’, Bidoun Magazine
In this reworked excerpt from his collection of essays Sigh the Beloved Country, Contributing Editor Bongani Madondo muses on how the Pan-African journal Transition, Vibe magazine and a buncha American Glossies Put Him on the Write Path.
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When I came around to it, Rajat Neogy’s now iconic and provocative essay ‘Do Magazines Culture?’, published in 1966 in issue 24 of Transition—the periodical he founded in Kampala—stamped its psychic footprints on my mind in ways I have yet to shake off. Can’t say I’m exactly in a hurry to.
To this day, I cannot say fo-sho if it was his rhetorical manner of posing the question, or the substance with which he wove, threaded and anchored the argument on the role of magazines in our—Black and brown folks’—complex lives and self-perceptions that kept me awake all these years.
Sure you can relate? D’y’know that feeling that strikes you that someone could be on to something, though what exactly that is needs a bit of sweating hard on the small stuff, paying a bit more attention or just kicking back and waiting with a hunch in your belly that the essence of what’s being hinted at will somehow reveal itself?
That’s how I felt, listening to Neogy’s question, for it indeed sounded like music to me. What genre, we’d soon found out.
Or not.
Neogy’s song done gone hooked me on that specific essay and the ma Disillusionment with his law degree led a 23 year old Madondo to the newsroom of City Press. His pen has been in conversation with South Africa ever since, attempting — whether through profiles on big-name celebrities or dispatches as an art critic — to rigorously examine and celebrate the chaotic, dynamic, and effervescent soul of his land. Myself, and fellow scribe Kagiso Mnisi, navigated the buzz of inner city Johannesburg and landed at the Keletla! Library (sic) — an artist-run space geared at children who go to school and sometimes live in the inner city — in order to meet the esteemed author and interview him; chiefly, aboutI’m Not Your Weekend Special, a book Madondo edited and contributed to about renowned South African pop star Brenda Fassie. Madondo, somewhat of an expert on Brenda Fassie, has interviewed Fassie on several occasions before her passing in 2004. He put together a diverse pool of contributors including journalist Charl Blignaut, and Brenda Fassie’s brother, Themba. We spoke to him about his creative process, his obsession with the life of Brenda Fassie, and his contribution to the book. Why Brenda? The entire country is. That is why ten years later, everywhere you go, it’s almost like people are celebrating or remembering the sinking of the sheep of Mendi; or they’re remembering that day in 1994 when black people were ushered into freedom. Everywhere you go, everyone’s talking about Brenda Fassie. It has something to do with the book, but the book is part of a wider celebrations. South Africa is obsessed with Brenda; South Africa loves Brenda, intensely; and the entire African continent loves Brenda intensely! So I just felt that I need to engage with the entire country, that is why I didn’t write a straight biography. Brenda, for me, was our girl in the mirror. When South Africa looks at itself in the mirror, it’s through the prism of Brenda Fassie, she is the filter. And when you’re looking at yourself in Author and historian Robin DG Kelley is one of the most distinguished experts on African American studies and a celebrated professor who has lectured at some of America’s highest learning institutions. He is currently Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Kelley has just completed the definitive biography of jazz pianist/composer Thelonious Monk titled Thelonious Monk: His Story, His Song, His Times and is best known for his books on African American culture: Race Rebels: Culture Politics and the Black Working Class, Yo’ Mama’s DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America and Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. He is currently working on another book, Speaking in Tongues: Jazz and Modern Africa. His career spans several esteemed universities, including serving as a Professor of History and Africana at New York University as well as acting as Chairman of NYU’s History Department. While at NYU, Kelley was one of the youngest full professors in the country at 32 years of age. He was also the William B. Ransford Professor of Cultural and Historical Studies at Columbia and helped to shape programs at its Institute for Research in African American Studies. Kelley’s work includes seven books as well as over 100 magazine articles, which have been featured in such publications as The Nation, Monthly Review, The Voice Literary Supplement, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Code Magazine, Utne Reader, and African Studies Review. He received his PhD in US History and MA in African History from UCLA. He should have been a Sophiatown heavy. With his two-tone brogues, tweed jackets, and occasional bowtie, he looks like something straight out of Sophiatown. Or from the Harlem of the Renaissance in the 20’s. All of which would make sense because Bongani Madondo’s literary soul mates include James Baldwin, E’skia Mphahlele and Miriam Makeba. He is a fast talking dandy armed with an encyclopedic grasp of all things Pop drawn to noire movies. He devours long reads in Esquire, Vanity Fair or the Paris Review Of Books. At a time when so many writers peddle words mostly to pay the rent, Madondo is that rare cat who still answers to a higher cause; the art of it all. It would be incorrect to call Madondo a reporter even though he has a nose for the news. Little wonder he calls himself a storyteller. But the stories he goes in search of stay with him for a long time. As he says in his Note to the Reader in I’m Not Your Weekend Special, “Way before I’d even seen her, let alone met her in person, the story of Brenda Fassie fascinated and perplexed me on many levels” But then again Madondo should perhaps have been a rock ‘n’ roller. A quick glance at the musicians he loves brings up the baddest rock artists of all time. Busi Mhlongo. Philip Tabane, Joni Mitchel. Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Brenda Fassie, Ali Farka Toure. If this list seems confusing, it’s because Madondo has an expansive sense of what qualifies as rock. Not for him the narrow definition of rock that bizarrely disqualifies its founders and acknowledges those who borrowed the music. For Madondo, the ultimate rock’n roll star of them all was Busi Mhlongo. What with her ability to bring to Maskandi a devil-may-care attitude, matched by a hoarse voice that announced Maskandi as the ultimate rebel party music. And if you ever saw Busi Mhlongo in performance, dressed in a punk-meets-goddess style, then you know Madondo says she is or rock ‘n’ roll royalty. What she did t Password Reset
A Cat Called Bongani Madondo