Shirley Deane

(1928 - 2024)

Shirley Deane was born in New York City and was given her first accordion at the age of eight. At 27, she left the United States to work her way around the world playing her own brand of jazz and classical music. She visited 67 countries, living in Pakistan for six months, Nepal for a year, India for eight years, and South Africa for 14 years. She studied music, psychology and philosophy, attending NYU and the University of Hawaii, and for a brief period studied medicine at the University of Munich. She was the first woman to drive a Land Rover from London to Kathmandu, and later managed a clinic at a Tibetan refugee camp in Nepal for the Swiss Red Cross, where she also raised funds and taught English. In 1967, she became public relations officer and fundraiser for Inanda Seminary near Durban, South Africa. She is the author of two previous books, Black South Africans, a Who’s Who (Oxford University Press, Capetown, 1978), which she published under Dee Shirley Deane, and Wisdom, Bliss, & Common Sense: Secrets of Self-Transformation (Quest Books, 1989), which she published under her Indian name, Darshani Deane. Ms. Deane returned to the United States in 1998 and settled in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.