Mbaqanga Nights

When all your options are impossible – how do you decide?

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

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, co-author "Playing the Changes; Jazz at an African University and On the Road"