Coeur tambour |French Edition Paperback| January 7, 2016 French Edition |by Scholastique Mukasonga

No one really knew anymore who this so-called African princess named Nyabinghi was. Her name had washed up on the shores of Jamaica under strange circumstances… On December 12, 1935, shortly before Fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia, an article appeared in the Jamaica Times titled “A Secret Society to Destroy the Whites.” It claimed that twenty million Black people, in the name of a mysterious queen called Nya-Binghi, were preparing to sweep across Europe and America—Nya-Binghi meaning “death to the Whites.”

The Rastas, who later adopted the name Nyabinghi, were anything but bloodthirsty. In the blissful haze of their sacred herb, they had no thought of killing anyone—the drums alone were their form of rebellion.

From Rwanda to the Caribbean to the Americas: mysteries, initiations, the birth of Rasta music—and amid the upheavals of the world, when the drum and the heart of Africa beat as one—a founding crime... Who killed the unforgettable diva Kitami, known to the four corners of the earth as “the Black Amazon”?