My father found the rhythm of life through music

Prof Ngugi Wa Thiongo's daughter Wanjiku wa Ngugi addressing members of the press at a Nairobi hotel during a breakfast meeting with journalist on 03/06/2015. [File, Standard]

Last Saturday, May 24th afternoon, my father Ngugi wa Thiong'o told me and my sister Ngina that he had come into enough mojo to pen a novel, and complete his last memoir, Horseman of the Sixties. Good news. Celebration. So, he asked to go to a jazz club. You see, inspiration and then memories for him were packed in rhythm and melody. "There is poetry in music Ciku," he often said.

Since he had moved to the north of Georgia, whose landscape reminded him of his birthplace in Rimuru, starkly different from California where he was Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature, he and I, and later Kwame Rigii, his favorite musician spent a couple of hours, at least one Saturday every month, in pursuit of rhythms.