Bantu Waltz : Nya's Archangel Story by Malaika Mutere 
Reviewed by MEL

Every writer knows: the first chapter is a promise. It’s where you bring your best pen forward. And if done right, that first chapter becomes a map, a mood, and a motive.

That’s why I bring to you, The First Chapter, a feature dedicated to honoring the artistry and ambition of Chapter One.

Our inaugural entry belongs to Bantu Waltz: Nya’s Archangel’s Story by Malaika Mutere—a novel that doesn’t tiptoe onto the page but dances in with rhythm, rage, and reverence. Mutere’s prose is at once a celebration and a lament, a reminder that the stories we tell about music, memory, and colonial survival are neither linear nor light. They’re layered.

Underneath the first chapter’s sun-drenched opening scene—students dancing, families gathering, a new year rising—lurks a tension that is anything but decorative. In a flashback, the protagonist, Nya, shares a memory that recalls British invasion music floating over Kenyan airwaves; the reader is reminded that even joy carries the echo of conquest. It’s not just a song; it’s a symbol. That static hums with identity theft, cultural interruption, and ancestral resistance.

And like any song worth listening to twice, this chapter delivers a syncopated truth: music in the wrong hands is deception. But in Mutere’s hands? It’s a key. A call. A coded language meant for the descendants of Bantu lineage—those with the ancient mitochondrial DNA to decipher the message carried in the melody.

I read this chapter before Black Music Month slipped away, and I’m glad I did. Because what Bantu Waltz makes clear is that Black music is more than a beat; it’s a genealogy. And sometimes, a first chapter is more than a beginning—it’s a remembrance.

So if you’re looking for fiction that blends Soul, Sorrow, and Sound into one artful opening, I recommend Bantu Waltz to readers of Soul/R&B fiction, social anthropology, and cultural memoirs dressed as novels.

Because The First Chapter isn’t just a feature.

It’s a feeling.

The First Chapter at the Art of MEL on Substack.