Simon Stengel

Simon Stengel was born in Rome in 1960. After emigrating to South Africa in 1969, he completed his schooling in 1977 and enrolled at the University of Natal in 1978, completing a Bachelor’s Degree in Music and English, then an Honours Degree in Musicology in 1985, and finally a Master’s Degree in Music in 1990.

Over the past forty years he has worked as a multi-instrumentalist musician, performing in concerts ranging from Classical to World Music, and has recorded film sound tracks with his extensive knowledge of Ethnomusicology. He has worked as a journalist, writing and editing a number of publications; he has deployed his talents in the local film industry, television and theatre; he is a trained luthier, and has reconstructed a range of ancient musical instruments and performed extensively with musical ensembles locally, and more recently he founded the steel firm ‘Arc Welding Art’ and created many top end interior icons throughout South Africa.

He is fluent in a number of languages, but prefers English as his language of choice. Heartbreak Tango is his first publication, and is set to be followed by many more in 2018, namely his account of his journalistic work with the BBC in Hillbrow in the 1990s, his research in endocrinology and the controversy of transgenderism, his social work in some of the poorest areas of Johannesburg, his research into demon possession and the supernatural, as well as a novel he is completing about the demise of Apartheid in South Africa.

He lives in Johannesburg, Durban and Rome, and travels extensively to research and to write about the human condition in the world today.