In The Jungle
Publisher: Rian Malan | edition 2003 | PDF | 40 pages | 1,2 mb

One of the great musical mysteries of all time.

A version of this piece was first published in Rolling Stone magazine.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, a small miracle took place in the brain of a man named Solomon Linda. It was 1939, and he was standing in front of a microphone in the only recording studio in black Africa when it happened. He hadn’t composed the melody or written it down or anything. He just opened his mouth and out it came, a haunting skein of fifteen notes that flowed down the wires and into a trembling stylus that cut tiny grooves into a spinning block of beeswax, which was taken to England and turned into a record that became a very big hit in that part of Africa...