Unbury Our Dead with Song

A love letter to music, beauty, and imagination. In the seedy ABC boxing club in Nairobi, four musicians-The Diva, The Corporal, the Taliban Man, and Miriam-gather for a competition to see who can perform the best Tizita. Listening from the audience is Kenyan tabloid journalist John Thandi Manfredi, whose own life makes him vulnerable to the Tizita. Desperate to learn more, he follows the musicians back to Ethiopia, hoping to learn the secret to the music from their personal lives and histories. His search takes him from the idyllic Ethiopian countryside to juke joints and raucous parties in Addis Ababa where he quickly learns that there is more to these performers than meets the eye. From the humble home life behind the Diva's glamorous facade, to the troubling question of the Corporal's military service history, Manfredi discovers that the many layers to this musical genre are reflected in the lives and secrets of its performers.

M?koma Wa Ng?g? is an Associate Professor of English at Cornell University and the son of writer Ng?g? wa Thiong'o. He is the author of The Rise of the African Novel: Politics of Language, Identity and Ownership, the novels Mrs. Shaw, Black Star Nairobi, Nairobi Heat, and two books of poetry, Logotherapy and Hurling Words at Consciousness. He is the co-founder of the Mabati-Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Literature and co-director of the Global South Project - Cornell.