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    The Legacy of Jomogee's Obsession
    Unavailable
    The Legacy of Jomogee's Obsession
    Unavailable
    The Legacy of Jomogee's Obsession
    Ebook372 pages5 hours

    The Legacy of Jomogee's Obsession

    By Vincent Gray

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Joe Magee began his career during a time of severe economic depression and poverty, circumstances which also forced many immigrants to resort to crime in order to earn a livelihood. They became involved in all kinds of racketeering, bootlegging, illegal gambling and prostitution. As an eighteen year old runaway in Durban Joe Magee, mingling with the marginal community of Irish, British and Eastern European Jewish reprobates, seeking employment opportunities for the aptitude and skills which nature had gifted him, he drifted into the shady mainly illegal immigrant populated underworld. At night he worked in the barely legitimate entertainment sector, mainly in bars, nightclubs, gambling dens, boxing events, dancehalls and brothels which as venues of licentiousness they had by dint of incredible ingenuity managed to evade or circumvent the shadow of the long arm of the law. He worked the nightshift to the beat of the big band music of Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and Glen Miller, working mainly in the very violent or physical role as a manual labourer, strong man or bouncer. During the day after getting up at midday he spent the remaining hours of daylight amusing himself on the Marine Parade as the consummate pick-up artist. In this topsy-turvy international and cosmopolitan microcosm, a satellite community drawn from the four corners the earth which had wobbled off its colonial orbit found itself entering into a forbidden universe, in the process engaging in miscegenistic mingling with Indians and Aboriginals, existing as a transient community with no future, like on a sinking ship everyone lived for the moment, and to use a cliché, the band played on, and in this world Joe Magee felt at home as a true citizen. He rubbed shoulders comfortably with anti-Stalinist Jewish Trotskyites, trade unionists, sailors from every country, conmen, pimps, criminals, in the process not only becoming an inventive entrepreneur but also acquiring a taste for a being a show-off, especially to an appreciate audience, dancing the Charleston 8-1-2-3 cow tail first with the right leg and then with the left leg , and then dancing the fall of the log, his fluid graceful movements a perfect mimicking of the most talented Cotton Club dancers.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherVincent Gray
    Release dateNov 18, 2020
    ISBN9781005937980
    Unavailable
    The Legacy of Jomogee's Obsession
    Author

    Vincent Gray

    As a son of a miner, I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. I grew up in the East Rand mining town of Boksburg. I matriculated from Boksburg High School. After high school, I was conscripted into the South African Defence Force for compulsory national military service when I was 17 years old. After my military service, I went to the University of the Witwatersrand. After graduating with a BSc honours degree I worked for a short period for the Department of Agriculture in Potchefstroom as an agronomist. As an obligatory member of the South African Citizen Miltary Force, I was called up to do 3-month camps on the 'Border' which was the theatre of the so-called counter-insurgency 'Bush War'. In between postgraduate university studies I also worked as a wage clerk on the South African Railways and as a travelling chemical sales rep. In my career as an academic, I was a molecular biologist at the University of the Witwatersrand, where I lectured courses in microbiology, molecular biology, biotechnology and evolutionary biology. On the research side, I was involved in genomics, and plant and microbial biotechnology. I also conducted research into the genomics of strange and weird animals known as entomopathogenic nematodes. I retired in 2019, however, I am currently an honorary professor at the University of the Witwaterand and I also work as a research writing consultant for the University of Johannesburg.

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