Summary This article examines the self-invention of Hugh Masekela as a troubadour of music and the frames through which the construction of the memory process is allowed to unfold. It argues that unlike straightforward resistance autobiography, Masekela's Still Grazing (2004) is an odd mixture of resistance autobiography, minstrel self-invention, skollie impishness and the internationalisation of his self. This odd mixture hides as much as it reveals about the subject intent on an ongoing process of self-invention. The text abounds with the celebration of Eros, debauchery and discursive manoeuvres of the exilic condition. In the process, the idea of national identity and crises is subsumed by the skollie metaphor to distance hideous episodes, which it craftily records and rationalises. In the true fashion of the skollie framing, the autobiography ends on a note of reform, borne by a serious confessional mode for past indiscretions and yet another reinvention frame as survivor of the ravages of time.
