Goin' Home
and far away
How Dvořák And Other Curious
Minds Shaped American Music
A brilliant assembly of historical characters, and a beautifully drawn portrait of the composer Antonín Dvořák
Michael Beckerman
At the turn of the twentieth century, an eminent musical visitor catalyzed a reverberant debate over national identity. And, as Much’s ambitious time-line makes clear, that debate resounds loudly to this day.
Joseph Horowitz
If they could meet today, what would Czech composer Antonín Dvořák, American composer Amy Beach and jazz pianist Bud Powell have to say to each other about identity and appropriation, racism and feminism, folk music and modernity? Petra, a music student from South Tyrol, embarks on a research trip to New York City, where the past magically comes alive and she engages first-hand in heated debates about the chances and limits of universality with the musical greats she’s studying. She is guided by the mysterious Navajo librarian López and joined by her Nigerian boyfriend Bukar who is on a mission to promote a value as universal as music—justice—for Boko Haram victims in his home country.
Goin’ Home and Far Away is a multilayered novel that focuses on a largely unknown chapter of American music history: the interplay of white, Black, and Indigenous music after the year 1890. Interspersed with QR codes to relevant music recordings, it critically examines America’s musical evolution and the current hot-button identity debate.
michl's
LAST JOUrNEY
michls letzte reise
- This book is only available in German -
After the failure of his professional careers, first as a South Tyrolean politician, then as a bridge-building consultant, Michl Siglmann has reached the limits of his power of judgment. Today (fall 2020), the octogenarian suffers from dementia. His caregiver Fatima was a teacher in her native Nigeria before Boko Haram forced her to flee.
In Michl and Fatima's sometimes serious, sometimes confused conversations about politics, religion, justice, racism and the importance of one's ideals, Michl's thoughts dwell predominantly in the past, punctuated by fantasies and painful nightmares, surreally heightened by the protective measures warranted by the coronavirus pandemic. Michl ignores present dangers, including the threats and insults that his neo-Nazi neighbors direct at Fatima. She tries with increasing success to funnel her experiences as a refugee and as a victim of racism into Michl's history-laden worldview. Inspired by the travelogue of the African explorer Heinrich Barth (Im Sattel durch Nord- und Zentralafrika), published shortly after 1850, Michl and Fatima embark on a fictitious journey from Tripoli (Libya) to Fatima's homeland without ever leaving the apartment. Passages from Barth's book prompt Michl and Fatima to reflect and to build a bridge to the present, which comes to a dramatic head and raises questions about personal responsibility and the various paths to justice.
THE OTHER branch
an alternative history of south tyrol
Der andere Ast -
Eine alternative Geschichte Südtirols
- This book is only available in German -
The Other Branch is a plea for the integrative power of a Europe of regions, packaged in the form of a thriller about a more European South Tyrol, in which the German and Italian language groups overcome traditional conflicts by living better together, and not just side by side. A plea for empathy.
The realization of this European South Tyrol is the aim of a group of young people. We are in the weeks before the "Wende" (the end of the East-West conflict in 1989), in a speculative ("uchronistic") historical situation. History has been turned upside down: South Tyrol became Austrian again in 1945, Austria was divided into a western and a communist state a little while later, South Tyrol is part of the latter, the Iron Curtain runs between South Tyrol and the Trentino. The young people propagate an open Europe and plan actions toward peaceful change, embedded in exciting episodes: refugee smuggling, power struggles within the local Communist Party, a secret service intrigue around a faked bomb attack, friendships and solidarities that transcend language groups.
A European-oriented South Tyrol becomes the initial spark for a peaceful European revolution.