My wife Maggie and I went last week to my friend Colette Paul’s launch for her new book, A Complete Success. (Check it out: Colette has a wonderful narrative voice, conversational in tone, often laugh-out-loud funny, but always wise and compassionate). Afterwards Maggie observed, ‘the thing I always want to ask is why anyone wants to write books and have them published’. Bear in mind we’ve only been together for 49 years: there’s a lot about each other we’re still getting to know!
It is a good question though. I found a succinct answer this morning, listening to a song called ‘Khanya Njalo’. It’s in the contemporary South African music genre called ‘amapiano’ and is by Zawadi Yamungu and the producer Kabza de Small. Yamungu has a exceptionally powerful and passionate voice, and I’ve listened to this song many times, but it’s in the Zulu language and I’ve only just found an English translation. The line that struck me was ‘I wish that my light could shine and reach others’.
Surely everyone wants that? Surely we all want to be seen? Surely we can only love people if we can see their light? Writing stories is only one way of shining, but it is one way.
You can hear Khanya Njalo here on Spotify, and here on Youtube. The song was written by Zawadi Yamungu (which is the stage name of Nkosingiphile Brightlady Mpanza. Her middle name seems apt.)
And if you like the track and actually want to pay the artists, you can find it on Bandcamp here:
https://pianohub.bandcamp.com/track/khanya-njalo
So you can. I don’t know how Spotify works, but I do know artists can choose whether or not to put their songs there, so I guess they feel it’s worthwhile to do so.