langston and bloke are sitting on the sofas in langston's house in Harlem. They are having tea, smoking cigarettes and playing blues in the background.

BLOKE: Man, I’m really tired today. Teaching African music and rhythms means you actually have to perform. It's just like swimming: you cannot teach efficiently while standing outside the pool. You have to be in there, to demonstrate clearly what you mean.

LANGSTON: Well, as they say, the only way to learn how to jump is to jump. By the way, I’ve been getting positive feedback about your lectures. It looks like you’ll have more public speaking engagements than you were initially asked to do. I know that you’ve been focusing on black colleges, but now I’m getting enquiries from the predominantly white colleges as well.

BLOKE: I think they are more interested in South African politics than culture, so much so that even when I try to teach music, I have to inject a bit of politics.

LANGSTON: Culture and politics go hand in hand, after all. They are all about the human condition. You can't really separate the two, especially in South Africa where culture has always been a site of struggle. I hear Miriam Makeba will be addressing the UN General Assembly soon. I think this will exert more pressure on the apartheid regime.

BLOKE: Miriam's address will be a great opportunity to bring the plight of South Africa right to the doorstep of global leaders. I like the fact that she is employing her agency as a musician to ensure that her voice reverberates across the political spectrum. We all have to do our bit to make a difference. I think I am also winning in conscientising young Negroes in these colleges. With the remainder of the lectures, I might go completely political. It's a subject that I enjoy engaging in, especially now that I’m away from the prying eyes of the Special Branch.

LANGSTON: Are you gonna say anything about the Sharpeville Massacre? A lot of young Negroes are quite curious to know what's gonna happen. It's been three years now, and many political and cultural activists like yourself have been streaming out of South Africa. They want to know how are you guys planning to wage a war seven seas away from your ancestral land.