This story starts with a song on the radio (as it often does). It is a song that never fails to cheer, so it seems apt to use it as the staring point, given that as I sit here writing this, it has been unfailingly chilly, damp and gloomy in recent days.
A song to gladden the heart, but what of it's singer? What stories can she tell?
The mid-1980s saw some white musicians bring the music of Africa to western ears. Peter Gabriel championed Youssou N'Dour and started the Womad festival, while Paul Simon sang about diamonds on the soles of his shoes and we now knew of Ladymith Black Mambazo. But there were others who were a big part of these stories, like Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba.
It turns out that Makeba had already had a turn in the spotlight before, and some from the west in the generation before mine, would have been aware of her - graced by her charisma and voice, back in the 1960s - before circumstance and politics moved her back into the shadows (at least in the US).
In the beginning
Zenzile Miriam Makeba was born in March 1932 in the township of Prospect, near Johannesburg, one of six children, with a Swazi mother (a traditional healer and domestic worker) and a Xhosa father (a teacher). This was a time where racism and segregation were the norm, but had not yet become enshrined in law (apartheid was introduced in 1948).
It was not an auspicious start. Her mother was convicted for selling umqombothi (a homemade malt beer) and spent the first six months of Miriam's life in jail (with Miriam). The family moved to the Transvaal when Makeba was little, but her father died when she was just six and her mother ended up moving back to Johannesburg for work. Miriam also had to take some work as a nanny to help out.
But music still found her. First, it was in the choir, at the Kilnerton Training Institute, a Methodist primary school that she attended. Her mother played several traditional instruments, while her elder brother brought home a good selection of records - especially Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald. Makeba realised early on that "music was a type of magic."
She was married in 1949, to trainee policeman James Kubay. Much of the next few years brought anything but happiness. Kubay was abusive and ultimately left her in 1951, but not before she had her only child, Bongi Makeba, in 1950. She also survived breast cancer around this time too.
Her love of music prevailed and perhaps against the better judgement of her family, she tried the life of a professional singer. First up, she had a spell in her cousins group, the Cuban Brothers, a male close-harmony group for which she sang a range of popular American songs. In 1954, she moved onto the Manhattan Brothers, who sang a mixture of South African and African-American tunes, in the style of bands like The Inkspots. To begin with, when they toured abroad, Miriam didn't go with them, and instead joined all-girl group the Sunbeams, who would become the Skylarks.
All aboard the Skylark - singing overseas
The Skylarks were Makeba, Abigail Kubeko, Mummy Girl Nketle and Mary Rabotobi - they played jazz and traditional South African melodies. They would sometimes be joined by the deep bass singer Sam Ngakane (who sang on many of their successful songs) and also Dorothy Musuka, a Rhodesian singer who Makeba had been a fan of for some time.
Ema Juba (The Skylarks): https://youtu.be/6qVpnpoRuEI
In 1955, Makeba met the then unknown young lawyer Nelson Mandela, who was impressed with her and thought she would go far. In 1956 she also got to record a solo record, Lovely Lies, which would become the first South African song to make it onto the US Billboard chart. The following year, Makeba was invited to join the African Jazz and Variety Review, with whom she spent the next eighteen months touring the continent.
Mbube: https://youtu.be/O1RMnBD5neg
Her time in the review led to her being spotted and getting the lead role in the South African jazz opera (there's a phrase you won't hear all that often) King Kong. Also in the ensemble was young Hugh Masekela. Makeba also landed a guest role in the anti-apartheid film, Come Back, Africa. This saw her travel to Europe and an invite to the Venice Film Festival, before a spell in London, where she met Harry Belafonte, who became her mentor.
He helped get her some recording studio time and also lent her his backing band. She would record a number of songs, including Pata Pata and Qongqothwane (too much for most westerners to say in Xhosa, so it became known as The Clicking Song).
Qongqothwane: https://youtu.be/rjo8h5qLpU0
In England she also met her next husband, Sonny Pillay, a South African ballad singer of Indian descent. They were divorced within months.
Next was a move to New York City. Then, in 1960, a double tragedy - as she is digesting the horrendous news about the Sharpeville Massacre (69 protestors killed by the police in Transvaal, including several of her family members), Makeba also found out that her mother had died. When she tried to return home for the funeral, she discovered that her passport had been cancelled. She managed to get her daughter out though and Bongi joined her in New York.
Increasingly political
Having been careful in the past about making any comments, in song and word, about anything vaguely political, especially the situation with apartheid back home. But these events had led her to lose that restraint, although she always maintained what she said was not about politics - "what I sing is not politics, it is the truth." In the London Times, she said, "People think I consciously decided to tell the world what was happening in South Africa. No! I was singing about my life, and in South Africa we always sang about what was happening to us, especially the things that hurt us."
By this point, Makeba had signed with RCA Victor records and put out her debut album, Miriam Makeba, in 1960. In 1962, she and Belafonte sang at the birthday concert for John F Kennedy at Madison Square Garden. The 1964 album, The World Of Miriam Makeba broke her into the Billboard Top100 (making #84).
Her profile was rising. She was now married to Hugh Masekela and had many big star friends (Lauren Bacall, Marlon Brando, Ray Charles, Sidney Poitier) surrounding her. She became particularly good friends with fellow singer and activist, Nina Simone, and they performed together at Carnegie Hall.
She was getting involved in African affairs too. She was a part of Kenya's independence celebrations in 1962 and helped raise money for leader, Jomo Kenyatta. In 1963 she gave the first of several testimonies to the UN Special Committee against Apartheid. Makeba was asking for sanctions to be imposed against South Africa's ruling National Party, including an arms embargo. Her words were not well received in her homeland - her music was banned and her citizenship revoked. During her lifetime she ended up at different times, with the passports of nine countries, including Algeria, Guinea, Ghana and Belgium.
That Song: Pata Pata
The song that sparked this story is Pata Pata, a joyous Afro-pop tune that was released in 1967. Makeba had originally recorded a version in the late 50s back in South Africa, but this version included some English added in.
It means "touch touch" in Xhosa, but was also the name of a dance popular in the townships of Johannesburg in the 1950s. And while it got her to #12 on the US Billboard chart, Makeba described it as one of her less significant songs. But that didn't stop her performing it right up until her death.
If you do not at least raise a smile and/or tap your feet during this song, then I fear that you may be clinically dead.
It was also in the early 60s that she first met Stokely Carmichael, a leader of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee and a prominent member of the Black Panther movement. Makeba was also an early supporter of Martin Luther King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference, but that support started to wane because it had invested in some South African companies.
Thulasizwe (I Shall Be Released) - with Nina Simone: https://youtu.be/BYpwy5oEH_0
In 1967, she met Carmichael again, while they were both in Conakry (Guinea). Her closest friends were aware she was now having an affair with him, and by early 1968, her marriage to Masekela was over and she now married Carmichael instead. Her association with such a prominent member of a seemingly radical group, meant that her popularity in the US started to drop. In fact, his reputation was enough to see her followed by the CIA and FBI, and then while they were on an overseas trip, Makeba's US visa was refused and the couple ended up moving to Guinea.
Guinea was a Marxist country at that time, which certainly suited Carmichael's politics and he even changed his name to Kwame Toure. Makeba went back to singing her way around Africa (South Africa excepted) and even became Guinea's delegate to the UN in 1975. By 1973 she had already separated from Carmichael, and that ended with divorce in 1978. 1981 saw marriage number five, this time to airline executive Bageot Bah.
Soweto Blues: https://youtu.be/YGbEQ210_J4
Tragedy, Belgium and Southern Africa calling
In 1985, tragedy struck, with Makeba's only child, Bongi, dying in childbirth. At this point, Makeba decided to leave Guinea with her two young grandchildren and headed to Brussels.
Masekela introduced her to Paul Simon who was bringing African music to the western masses with his 1986 smash Graceland. She joined him on his world tour, which concluded with two concerts in Harare, Zimbabwe. Her association with Simon caused some problems, since the album had been recorded in South Africa, meaning her relationship with him seemed to breach the boycott of which she was a key supporter. But Makeba and Masekela reasoned that it was worth the compromise, as the attention this brought shone a spotlight on the issue of apartheid and made many discuss it for the first time.
Under African Skies (with Paul Simon): https://youtu.be/85rr5SqrCZI
By 1990, apartheid was gone and Mandela released - one of his first acts being to persuade Makeba to return home, which she did in June 1990. Her busy schedule did not falter on returning. She recorded and toured with Dizzy Gillespie, Nina Simone and Masekela (Eyes On Tomorrow); she played the mother of the titular character in 1992's Sarafina! (based on the 1976 Soweto Uprising); and she worked with first lady, Graca Machel-Mandela as an advocate for children with HIV / AIDS and child soldiers and the physically handicapped - also establishing the Zenzile Miriam Makeba Foundation and the Makeba Rehabilitation Centre for Girls (and orphanage).
Her death and legacy
Osteoarthritis caused Makeba to call her 2005 tour her farewell, although in the end she continued to perform sporadically literally right up until her death, which came after she fell ill while performing at a concert in Castel Volturno (near Caserta, Italy).
Over more than thirty albums, Makeba's dynamic vocal range and emotional performances had captivated several generations around the world. Historian David Coplan said that she "Americanised African music," while writer Robin Denselow pointed to her "unique blend of rousing township styles and jazz influenced balladry."
As well as being known as Mama Africa, she was also referred to as The Empress of African Song and the Queen of South African Music. Harry Belafonte had once called her, "the most revolutionary new talent to appear in any medium in the last decade."
Many observers had commented on her look over the years, as she never wore make up or did anything special with her hair. Makeba said, "I see other black women imitate my style, which is no style at all, but just letting our hair be itself. They call it the Afro look."
April Sizemore-Barber said of her voice and activism, "a surface onto which Americans projected their own narratives about African and American race relations." This is a reference to the fact that she generally sang in African languages, which made western audiences view as being 'authentic African.'
She ended up being a tireless activist for her homeland and its people, so the last word on her impact should go to long time musical accomplice and former husband, Hugh Masekela. "There's nobody in Africa who made the world more aware of what was happening in South Africa, than Miriam Makeba. This was because of the way in which she described the songs.... unwittingly she educated African American artists."
Sources:
Wikipedia
Guardian - Miriam Makeba obituary
South African History Online
The Conversation
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