School of hard knocks: Jazz drummer Gontse Makhene has a debut album in the pipeline. Photo: Solomon Moremong
James Baldwin’s 1963 collection of non-fiction essays The Fire Next Time takes its title from a couplet from the old African-American spiritual Mary Don’t You Weep.
This song, which originates from the time before the American Civil War, is said to be a coded message of hope, resilience and resistance.
In his invocation of the song, Baldwin used the following couplet…
