One Love, Ghoema Beat: Inside the Cape Town Carnival

Each year, the Colored working class of Cape Town Celebrates itself in a spectacular, lively Carnival Historian, photographer, and musician John Edwin Mason spent three Carnival seasons with one troupe, the Pennsylvanians Crooning Minstreals, becoming an `honorary member' and marching in full troupe gear, camera in hand. He came to know several other troupes, too. among them the Fabulous Woodstock Starlites. Mason's unique position --- as an outsider with an insider's point of view - allowed him a singular documentary perspective on this inimitable Cultural tradition and the people who keep it alive He explores the Cape Town Carnival's history and records its public and private sides from within the troupe, rather than from the sidelines. As a result. One Love, Ghoema Beat reveals aspects that outsiders rarely see - band and choir rehearsals, life in the Klopskamers (clubhouses). and the making of costumes and drums. With several short essays and superb photographs, this book offers a comprehenvsive look at the minstrel troupes that are the exuberant face of Cape Town's Carnival.

John Edwin Mason teaches African history and history of photography at the University of virginia in Charlottesville. He has written extensively on the history of Cape Town, an interest that led him, inevitably, to the New Year Carnival in 2007. friends invited him to join the Pennsylvanians Crooning Minstrels, a leading troupe Recognizing the Carnival's Cultural importance, he gladly accepted the offer and was able to document a unique behind-the-scenes perspective on the Pennsylvanias and other troupes. As a photographer, he also contributes regularly to music and motor-sports magazines.