What did that mean, an African city? Why? Because Joburg was soundtracked by the maquamba beat? There was nothing un-African about Cape Town. He felt the old sentences begin to take shape, the old argument begin to coalesce. This city and all its fucked-up divisions and casual cruelties was the way it was because of slavery and colonialism and you don’t get more African than that.

Marley effectively used the hypnotic sounds of reggae laced with poetic lyrics to protest injustices, creating an entirely novel philosophical discourse through music. Brown’s aggressive funk, which became the backbone of Fela’s Afrobeat, placed the reviled, feared black body and features on the map of the world in a positive, sensuous light. But neither Brown nor Marley tried to organize popular resentment into a political party, as Fela did. Neither went as far as Fela in identifying in unmistakably graphic terms the elites that were responsible for the oppression of African peoples all over the world.

Coltrane’s musical freedom, like most freedoms, was hard-won. He spent many hours a day practicing—rediscovering, investigating, and revising his ideas from the day before. He was determined to keep digging until he hit bedrock—the solid, essential truth at his own core. He wanted to share that truth with others. Music, he believed, was the language through which to do it. “You can’t ram philosophies down anybody’s throat,” he said, “and the music is enough!

In that age of optimism when the colonial shackles were newly off and the future was bright, statesponsored ensembles presented a cosmopolitan mix of Caribbean, European, American, and African music, a musical modernity with an unmistakable local inflection. Some of the bands included in their repertoire the traditional songs of various ethnic groups but the kora, balafon, and traditional drums were supplemented with modern instruments and sometimes supplanted by them. Whatever was played was played with focus and with that effortless virtuosity that is a byword for Manding musicianship—but one should never call virtuosity effortless.

In the darkness our guests will begin arriving, boots off at the door, coats on the bed in my study upstairs. For a brief moment each guest is in the silence of a room in someone else’s home, divesting themselves of unneeded warmth. They can hear music from unseen speakers: Gladys Knight’s “Since I Fell for You.” Their eyes rest on my botanical drawings and on the framed photograph of John Coltrane. Then they come down into the hubbub.