In the 1960s and 70s, work on a census-catalogue of manuscripts of Renaissance polyphony took me to virtually every country in Western and Eastern Europe. I listened to popular music on the radio on these trips, watched musical programs on television, attended live pop performances, and bought recordings. But it wasn't until a trip to southern Africa in the early spring of 1978 brought me into contact with a body of music so vibrant and so inseparable from the dramatic events unfolding there that I considered writing about music in a culture other than my own.

Though UN boycotts of South Africa were not yet in effect when I was invited to lecture on American music at the University of Natal in Durban, I consulted with black American friends and organizations before accepting. Their advice was to go, to experience conditions in that country at first hand.

On my arrival in February of 1978 I began to realize that my preconceptions of South Africa had not prepared me for its social and political realities, and certainly not for the richness, complexity, and vitality of its musical life. I began hearing some extraordinary music on Radio Zulu, about which I knew nothing at the time; so I visited its studios, and also obtained commercial recordings of the music I'd heard.