Brave Music of a Distant Drum is a story of African Slavery. I was excited to read about the issue of slavery from the perspective of an African author, and then perplexed to learn Manu Herbstein is indeed African, holding dual citizenship in South Africa and Ghana, but a White African. While this was not the ethnic perspective I was expecting, Manu Herbstein has won literary awards for his literature including his first novel regarding slavery, Ama, A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade. This book is not for sale in the United States (Amazon is an exception), but Brave Music of a Distant Drum is a sequel to this first novel, and written for a younger audience making it much more attainable for students by taking the story of Ama (450 pages in his first novel) and shortening it to 175 pages in Brave Music of a Distant Drum.
In Brave Music of a Distant Drum, the main character, Ama is old and wants to dictate her life story to her son (a literate slave) who will write it down. The retelling of her life story begins in West Africa, where Ama was free until she was kidnapped by another African Nation group who sold her into slavery. Her slave experiences first involve working for royalty in West Africa before being sold to Europeans and eventually traveling across the Atlantic Ocean to Brazil. She participates in a slave revolt, being educated in Portuguese, endures the cruelty and torture of slavery and life on a plantation in Brazil. As she dictates her story to her son he learns not only about the events of her life, but also his father’s life, and he gets a glimpse at traditional African religion and ceremonies that challenge him as a Christian.
Author Manu Herbstein has received recognition for his research in writing Ama, A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade and he takes that same research and applies it to Brave Music of a Distant Drum. Herbstein discusses his research which was based out of a university and library in Ghana on the following website which could be interesting in itself to learn about the story and the author’s perspective when writing his books (Ama, Africa Today). A reader will get a snap shot of some of the experiences Brazilian slaves may have went through (although not the worst of experiences that have been recorded) and a glimpse at some Portuguese vocabulary relevant to plantation life in Brazil.
If any students are interested in reading Brave Music of a Distant Drum it can be borrowed from Mr. Montanye’s “Global Scholars Library” in his classroom, room number 228.