And so that is why the title is Wayfarers’ Hymns. And the poetry is known as hymns, difela, but these are secular hymns, they are not religious hymns. And it’s a kind of music that’s full of poetry. So Basothos have taken the concertina and the accordion and turned them into Sesotho traditional instruments. Very popular there, predominantly the instrument there is the accordion, it used to be the concertina before. Zakes Mda This book is centred around famo music. And about the process of writing this book about musical gangsters, really. Tell us a little bit about what inspired you. Nokuthula Mazibuko-Msimang I was intrigued that yes, you talk about the culture of Basotho and the instruments of Basotho, but not in the way that you’ve done before, as a kind of healing salve to our colonial oppression and apartheid and so on.
This is an edited transcription of that interview.
At a launch of the book at the University of Pretoria, Dr Nokuthula Mazibuko-Msimang interviewed Mda about it. His latest novel, Wayfarers’ Hymns, is at once full of drama and mirth, set in Lesotho and playing out in the bloody world of famo musicians. Zakes Mda is one of South Africa’s best-loved novelists – though he is also a celebrated playwright, children’s book author and an increasingly visible painter.
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