Clegg’s origin story to be savoured for its depth

ON HIS official website, Johnny Clegg has been described as “one of South Africa’s most celebrated sons. He was a singer, a songwriter, a dancer, anthropologist, and a musical activist whose infectious crossover music, a vibrant blend of Western pop and African Zulu rhythms, has exploded on to the international scene and broken through all the barriers in his own country”.

At the time of his passing in July 2019, he had completed an unfinished manuscript that his sons Jesse and Jaron refer to as “his own origin story”.

With the accomplished editing of Alison Lowry, that manuscript has been transformed into Scatterling of Africa, Johnny Clegg’s origin autobiography.

Such was the global impact of his music career that even those with scant contact with his music will know who he was and what he did.

Those who are fans and familiar with much that is Johnny Clegg will find plenty that enriches and informs in this splendid memoir.

“The story that Johnny most wanted to tell was how, as a young adolescent boy, he was drawn into the world of the Zulu migrant worker, what it meant to him then, and how it came to inform his life and his identity.”

Clegg’s detailing of his family background and his childhood add a fascinating and colourful foundation that precedes the transformative meeting with the events and people who planted and germinated the seeds of a phenomenal musical career.

“There are moments in life that are pure, and which seem to hang in the air, unhitched from the everyday world as we know it ... Like when I saw a young Zulu tribesman on Christmas Day doing ukugiya with his fighting sticks in the streets of

Killarney, demolishing imaginary enemies and showing off his fighting technique. Meeting Charlie Mzila was the first of such moments that I experienced from the Zulu community.”

What follows is a remarkable insight into the personal evolution of Clegg and his search for identity and meaning and his building of the blocks that made him who he was.

Scatterling of Africa is not a showbiz memoir like any other. Johnny Clegg was much more than his songs and his live performances. This fine book will astound you with the depth and passion of a dedicated and committed man of Africa, a man with a great heart.

It is a magnificent read, one not to be hurried through, but a book to be savoured for its generous offering and for its remarkable breadth and depth.

Someday you will be a man

And you will be the leader of a big old band

Many people coming from miles around

To hear you play your music when the sun goes down

Maybe someday your name will be in lights

Saying “Johnny B. Goode tonight"

Lala ngoxolo, Johnny Clegg, noble warrior.

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