In 1968, the year I wrote Slaughterhouse Five, I finally became grown up enough to write about the bombing of Dresden. It was the largest massacre in European history. I, of course, know about Auschwitz, but a massacre is something that happens suddenly, the killing of a whole lot of people in a very short time. In Dresden, on February 13, 1945, about 135,000 people were killed by British firebombing in one night. It was pure nonsense, pointless destruction. The whole city was burned down, and it was a British atrocity, not ours. They sent in night bombers, and they came in and set the whole town on fire with a new kind of incendiary bomb. And so everything organic, except my little PoW group, was consumed by fire. It was a military experiment to find out if you could burn down a whole city by scattering incendiaries over it. Kurt Vonnegut's 1968 novel Slaughter-house Five is an essential part of the literature of the bombing of Dresden. In his new book A Man Without a Country: A
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I really do not understand why those Londoners are programming Hugh Masakela. I’ve listened to his Music and frankly speaking : I didn’t like it.
Threre’s much better in South Africa. Take for instance Dollar Brand , i e Abdullah Ibrahim. A great artist.
Just listen to “ Good News From Africa”. A masterpiece. It’s http://www.jazzrecords.com/enja/2048.htm
He’s very serious. He wants his Music to be respected. He doesn’t start playing as long as there is noise in the concert hall.
My guess is that he’s not that well known in the UK. When he was in exile ( apartheid) he lived in Germany. He keeps playing all over Europe ( mostly in Germany). He now has a small institute at the Cape Town University.
You can find info on pianist Dollar Brand / Abdullah Ibrahim here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_Ibrahim
and most of all : http://www.abdullahibrahim.com/indexf.html
The Guardian said : http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2001/dec/08/jazz
I think you’ll like this Music.
BT