Title: One Love, Ghoema Beat - Inside The Cape Town Carnival
Author: John Edwin Mason
Publisher: Random House Struik
Imprint: Travel and Heritage
Cape Town, South Africa 2010
ISBN 9781770078161 / ISBN 978-1-77-007816-1
Hardcover, 21x19 cm, 128 pages, throughout colour photos
Each year, the coloured 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 Minstrels, 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 comprehensive look at the minstrel troupes that are the exuberant face of Cape Town's Carnival.
Introduction
Tweede Nuwe Jaar
Backstage at the Carnival
Champion of Champions Acknowledgements