ABDULAH IBRAHIM [DOLLAR BRAND] - QUOTATION

Tranquility is perhaps a word one should never use in relation to Dollar Brand [Ibrahim Abdullah], either to describe a sense of physical repose, which he positively lacks, or artistically, to describe a form of reconciliation between the private and the public. He seems to be someone who continually experiences the public world as hostile and a threat to his private vision; and in turn his hostility and aggressiveness seems to the public a little gratuitous. Sometimes listening to him it has seemed to me that part of the disturbing violence which comes through his playing is the necessary result of his inability to compromise his private self or pay any attention to the social graces of the public relations man.

- Lewis Nkosi, "Dollar Brand", The New African, April 1965.