Miriam Makeba
Zenzile Miriam Makeba (4 March 1932 – 9 November 2008), nicknamed Mama Africa, was a South African singer, songwriter, actress, and civil rights activist. Associated with musical genres including Afropop, jazz, and world music, she was an advocate against apartheid and white-minority government in South Africa.
Miriam Makeba
9 November 2008 (aged 76)
Mama Africa
- Singer
- songwriter
- actress
- civil rights activist
1953–2008
- Manteca
- Strut
- RCA Victor
- Mercury
- Kapp
- Collectables
- Suave
- Warner Bros.
- Reprise
- PolyGram
- Drg
- Stern's Africa
- Kaz
- Sonodisc
Born in Johannesburg to Swazi and Xhosa parents, Makeba was forced to find employment as a child after the death of her father. She had a brief and allegedly abusive first marriage at the age of 17, gave birth to her only child in 1950, and survived breast cancer. Her vocal talent had been recognized when she was a child, and she began singing professionally in the 1950s, with the Cuban Brothers, the Manhattan Brothers, and an all-woman group, the Skylarks, performing a mixture of jazz, traditional African melodies, and Western popular music. In 1959, Makeba had a brief role in the anti-apartheid film Come Back, Africa, which brought her international attention, and led to her performing in Venice, London, and New York City. In London, she met the American singer Harry Belafonte, who became a mentor and colleague. She moved to New York City, where she became immediately popular, and recorded her first solo album in 1960. Her attempt to return to South Africa that year for her mother's funeral was prevented by the country's government.
Makeba's career flourished in the United States, and she released several albums and songs, her most popular being "Pata Pata" (1967). Along with Belafonte, she received a Grammy Award for Best Folk Recording for their 1965 album An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba. She testified against the South African government at the United Nations and became involved in the civil rights movement. She married Stokely Carmichael, a leader of the Black Panther Party, in 1968, and consequently lost support among white Americans. Her visa was revoked by the US government when she was traveling abroad, forcing her and Carmichael to relocate to Guinea. She continued to perform, mostly in African countries, including at several independence celebrations. She began to write and perform music more explicitly critical of apartheid; the 1977 song "Soweto Blues", written by her former husband Hugh Masekela, was about the Soweto uprising. After apartheid was dismantled in 1990, Makeba returned to South Africa. She continued recording and performing, including a 1991 album with Nina Simone and Dizzy Gillespie, and appeared in the 1992 film Sarafina!. She was named an FAO Goodwill Ambassador in 1999, and campaigned for humanitarian causes. She died of a heart attack during a 2008 concert in Italy.
Makeba was among the first African musicians to receive worldwide recognition. She brought African music to a Western audience, and popularized the world music and Afropop genres. Despite her cosmopolitan background, she was frequently viewed by Western audiences as an embodiment of Africa: she was also seen as a style icon in both South Africa and the West. Makeba made popular several songs critical of apartheid, and became a symbol of opposition to the system, particularly after her right to return was revoked. Upon her death, former South African President Nelson Mandela said that "her music inspired a powerful sense of hope in all of us."
Early years[edit]
Childhood and family[edit]
Zenzile Miriam Makeba was born on 4 March 1932 in the black township of Prospect, near Johannesburg, as the only child of her father and the sixth of her mother. Her Xhosa father, Caswell Makeba, was a teacher; he died when she was six years old. Her Swazi mother, Christina Makeba, was a domestic worker; she had previously separated from her first husband and met and married Caswell shortly afterwards.[2][3][4] Makeba later said that before she was conceived, her mother had been warned that any future pregnancy could be fatal. Neither Miriam nor her mother seemed likely to survive after a difficult labour and delivery. Miriam's grandmother, who attended the birth, often muttered "uzenzile", a Xhosa word that means "you brought this on yourself", to Miriam's mother during her recovery, which inspired her to give her daughter the name "Zenzile".[5]
When Makeba was eighteen days old, her mother was arrested and sentenced to a six-month prison term for selling umqombothi, a homemade beer brewed from malt and cornmeal. The family could not afford the small fine required to avoid a jail term, and Miriam spent the first six months of her life in jail.[a][3][7][8] By the time of her mother's release from prison, Makeba's father, who had been having difficulty finding work as a teacher, had obtained a job as a clerk at the Shell Oil Company in Nelspruit (now Mbombela) and the family moved along with him accordingly.[4][9] After her father's death she moved to the house of her maternal grandmother in Riverside Township outside of Pretoria, along with her siblings and cousins, while her mother worked for white families in Johannesburg to support the family.[4][10]
As a child, Makeba sang in the choir of the Kilnerton Training Institute in Pretoria, an all-black Methodist primary school that she attended for eight years.[3][11] Her talent for singing earned her praise at school.[9] Makeba was baptised a Protestant, and sang in church choirs, in English, Xhosa, Sotho, and Zulu; she later said that she learned to sing in English before she could speak the language.[10]
Makeba was influenced by her family's musical tastes; her mother played several traditional instruments, and her elder brother collected records, including those of Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, and taught Makeba songs. Her father played the piano and sang in a group called The Mississippi 12, and his musical inclination was later a factor in Makeba's family accepting what was seen as a risque choice of career.[4][10]
Makeba left school to support her family and first worked as a live-in nanny for a Greek family in the Johannesberg suburb of Waverley for three months. The mother stopped paying her and went to the police to accuse her of stealing, so Makeba fled back to her grandmother's home in Riverside. Around that time Makeba's mother began the process of becoming a sangoma or traditional healer, which required her to go back to her ancestral homeland in Eswatini (then Swaziland). Makeba stayed behind working as a launderer for expatriate workers to support her family.[4]
In 1949, Makeba married James Kubay, a policeman in training, with whom she had her only child, Sibongile "Bongi" Makeba, in 1950. Makeba was then diagnosed with breast cancer, and her husband, who was said to have beaten her, left her shortly afterwards, after a two-year marriage.[2][12][9][10][13] A decade later she overcame cervical cancer via a hysterectomy.[10]
Early career[edit]
Makeba began her professional musical career with the Cuban Brothers, a South African all-male close harmony group, with whom she sang covers of popular American songs.[14][15] Soon afterwards, at the age of 21, she joined a jazz group, the Manhattan Brothers, who sang a mixture of South African songs and pieces from popular African-American groups.[14] Makeba was the only woman in the group.[16] With the Manhattan Brothers she recorded her first hit, "Lakutshn, Ilanga", in 1953, and developed a national reputation as a musician.[17] In 1956 she joined a new all-woman group, the Skylarks, singing a blend of jazz and traditional South African melodies. Formed by Gallotone Records, the group was also known as the Sunbeams.[15][17] Makeba sang with the Skylarks when the Manhattan Brothers were travelling abroad; later, she also travelled with the Manhattan Brothers. In the Skylarks, Makeba sang alongside Rhodesian-born musician Dorothy Masuka, whose music Makeba had followed, along with that of Dolly Rathebe. Several of the Skylarks' pieces from this period became popular; the music historian Rob Allingham later described the group as "real trendsetters, with harmonisation that had never been heard before."[9][10] Makeba received no royalties from her work with the Skylarks.[17]
While performing with the Manhattan Brothers in 1955, Makeba met Nelson Mandela, then a young lawyer; he later remembered the meeting, and that he felt that the girl he met "was going to be someone."[10] With the Manhattan Brothers, Makeba recorded "Lakutshona Ilanga",[18][b] written by Mackay Davashe. The song's popularity prompted requests for an English version, and in 1956, Gallotone Records released "Lovely Lies", Makeba's first solo success and first recording in English.[10][18] However, the Xhosa lyric about a man looking for his beloved in jails and hospitals was replaced with the unrelated and innocuous line "You tell such lovely lies with your two lovely eyes" in the English version. The piece became the first South African record to chart on the United States Billboard Top 100.[10] In 1957, Makeba was featured on the cover of Drum magazine.[20]
In 1959, Makeba sang the lead female role in the Broadway-inspired South African jazz opera King Kong;[3][11] among those in the cast was the musician Hugh Masekela.[21] The musical was performed to racially integrated audiences, raising her profile among white South Africans.[9] Also in 1959, she had a short guest appearance in Come Back, Africa, an anti-apartheid film produced and directed by the American independent filmmaker Lionel Rogosin.[22] Rogosin cast her after seeing her on stage in African Jazz and Variety show,[23] on which Makeba was a performer for 18 months.[24] The film blended elements of documentary and fiction and had to be filmed in secret as the government was expected to be hostile to it. Makeba appeared on stage, and sang two songs: her appearance lasted four minutes.[25] The cameo made an enormous impression on viewers, and Rogosin organised a visa for her to attend the premiere of the film at the twenty-fourth Venice Film Festival in Italy, where the film won the prestigious Critics' Choice Award.[22][26] Makeba's presence has been described as crucial to the film, as an emblem of cosmopolitan black identity that also connected with working-class black people due to the dialogue being in Zulu.[27]
Makeba's role in Come Back, Africa brought her international recognition and she travelled to London and New York to perform.[15][24] In London she met the American singer Harry Belafonte, who became her mentor, helping her with her first solo recordings.[28][29] These included "Pata Pata",[c] which would be released many years later, and a version of the traditional Xhosa song "Qongqothwane", which she had first performed with the Skylarks.[9] Though "Pata Pata"—described by Musician magazine as a "groundbreaking Afropop gem"[31]—became her most famous song, Makeba described it as "one of my most insignificant songs".[32] While in England, she married Sonny Pillay,[d] a South African ballad singer of Indian descent; they divorced within a few months.[2]
Makeba then moved to New York, making her US music debut on 1 November 1959 on The Steve Allen Show in Los Angeles for a television audience of 60 million.[2][33] Her New York debut at the Village Vanguard occurred soon after;[34] she sang in Xhosa and Zulu, and performed a Yiddish folk song.[35] Her audience at this concert included Miles Davis and Duke Ellington; her performance received strongly positive reviews from critics.[33] She first came to popular and critical attention in jazz clubs,[36] after which her reputation grew rapidly.[34] Belafonte, who had helped Makeba with her move to the US, handled the logistics for her first performances.[37] When she first moved to the US, Makeba lived in Greenwich Village, along with other musicians and actors.[38] As was common in her profession, she experienced some financial insecurity, and worked as a babysitter for a period.[39]
Music and image[edit]
Musical style[edit]
The groups with which Makeba began her career performed mbube, a style of vocal harmony which drew on American jazz, ragtime, and Anglican church hymns, as well as indigenous styles of music.[9] Johannesburg musician Dolly Rathebe was an early influence on Makeba's music,[9][48] as were female jazz singers from the US.[121] Historian David Coplan writes that the "African jazz" made popular by Makeba and others was "inherently hybridized" rather than derivative of any particular genre, blending as it did marabi and jazz, and was "Americanized African music, not Africanized American music".[122] The music that she performed was described by British writer Robin Denselow as a "unique blend of rousing township styles and jazz-influenced balladry".[48]
Makeba released more than 30 albums during her career. The dominant styles of these shifted over time, moving from African jazz to recordings influenced by Belafonte's "crooning" to music drawing from traditional South African musical forms.[15] She has been associated with the genres of world music[10] and Afropop. She also incorporated Latin American musical styles into her performances.[31] Historian Ruth Feldstein described her music as "[crossing] the borders between what many people associated with avant-garde and 'quality' culture and the commercial mainstream"; the latter aspect often drew criticism.[123] She was able to appeal to audiences from many political, racial, and national backgrounds.[74]
She was known for having a dynamic vocal range, and was described as having an emotional awareness during her performances.[9] She occasionally danced during her shows,[13] and was described as having a sensuous presence on stage.[124] She was able to vary her voice considerably: an obituary remarked that she "could soar like an opera singer, but she could also whisper, roar, hiss, growl and shout. She could sing while making the epiglottal clicks of the Xhosa language."[13] She sang in English and several African languages, but never in Afrikaans, the language of the apartheid government in South Africa. She once stated "When Afrikaaners sing in my language, then I will sing theirs."[125] English was seen as the language of political resistance by black South Africans due to the educational barriers they faced under apartheid; the Manhattan Brothers, with whom Makeba had sung in Sophiatown, had been prohibited from recording in English.[125] Her songs in African languages have been described as reaffirming black pride.[66]
Politics and perception[edit]
Makeba said that she did not perform political music, but music about her personal life in South Africa, which included describing the pain she felt living under apartheid.[13][48] She once stated "people say I sing politics, but what I sing is not politics, it is the truth", an example of the mixing of personal and political issues for musicians living during apartheid.[126] When she first entered the US, she avoided discussing apartheid explicitly, partly out of concern for her family still in South Africa.[42] Nonetheless, she is known for using her voice to convey the political message of opposition to apartheid,[127] performing widely and frequently for civil rights and anti-apartheid organisations. Even songs that did not carry an explicitly political message were seen as subversive, due to their being banned in South Africa.[66] Makeba saw her music as a tool of activism, saying "In our struggle, songs are not simply entertainment for us. They are the way we communicate."[128] She expressed her political views, and criticism of apartheid in particular, more frequently in later years; her exile, and the death of her daughter, have both been identified as making her more vocal.[129]
Makeba's use of the clicks common in languages such as Xhosa and Zulu (as in "Qongqothwane", "The Click Song") was frequently remarked upon by Western audiences. It contributed to her popularity and her exotic image, which scholars have described as a kind of othering, exacerbated by the fact that Western audiences often could not understand her lyrics.[32][130] Critics in the US described her as the "African tribeswoman" and as an "import from South Africa", often depicting her in condescending terms as a product of a more primitive society.[131][132] In seeing her as an embodiment of Africa, Western audiences tended to ignore her cosmopolitan background.[129] Conversely, she is also described as shaping Pan-African identity during the decline of colonialism.[133] Commentators also frequently described her in terms of the prominent men she was associated with, despite her own prominence.[131][129] During her early career in South Africa she had been seen as a sex symbol, an image that received considerably less attention in the US.[131]
Makeba was described as a style icon, both in her home country and the US.[16] She wore no makeup and refused to straighten her hair for shows, thus helping establish a style that came to be known internationally as the "Afro look".[22][134] According to music scholar Tanisha Ford, her hairstyle represented a "liberated African beauty aesthetic".[135] She was seen as a beauty icon by South African schoolgirls, who were compelled to shorten their hair by the apartheid government.[136] Makeba stuck to wearing African jewellery; she disapproved of the skin-lighteners commonly used by South African women at the time, and refused to appear in advertisements for them.[137][138] Her self-presentation has been characterised by scholars as a rejection of the predominantly white standards of beauty that women in the US were held to, which allowed Makeba to partially escape the sexualisation directed at women performers during this period.[139] Nonetheless, the terms used to describe her in the US media have been identified by scholars as frequently used to "sexualize, infantalize, and animalize" people of African heritage.[32]