Mother of World Music, “Mother Africa,” Miriam Makeba, Passed Today

Makeba was the person who opened up “world music” to the majority of the western world. I wonder how many people currently listening to some of the newer singers and groups out of Africa/ India/ South America/ China / Russia / etc. realize it was people like Miriam Makeba that opened up the minds and hearts of people worldwide and made their hearts clamor for more.
Quote from Ghostdreams, a music follower and lover.

“[I] spent two years in Rhodesia just as the country was becoming independent Zimbabwe. . . and would often travel to South Africa. . .how i remember going into the townships and markets and hearing the wonderful- full- sultry- intoxicating music of Makeba. . . it filled so many corners of disparity and desolation with vitality-and jubilation in Southern Africa…”
Quote from River, traveler and music lover.

Long before Detroit groups, long before Motown, long before Della and Leontyn and before Jessye, prodigious talents all, had traveled to the continent to make their mark… there was Miriam Makeba in Africa, daughter of the dirt there.

I heard her sing many times; her voice dark, dark coffee with sweet chocolate. And many called her, Mother Africa.

Child of South Africa, born under apartheid, her mother was Swazi sangoma, her father, a Xhosa… and somehow, this girlchild came to sing her traditional African music into the hearts and souls of people worldwide, first during the folk song revival of the 1960s… when Harry Belafonte took her under his wing and toured with her as equals.

Across oceans she brought such songs as Pata Pata, and The Click Song (Qongqothwane in Xhosa), that is, using the old language that has phonetic clicks to it, something a mostly white Euro and American culture had never heard nor known about before.

In 1966, Makeba received the Grammy Award for Best Folk Recording together with Harry Belafonte for An Evening With Belafonte/Makeba. The album dealt with the political plight of black South Africans under Apartheid.

Her South African passport was revoked when she tried to return there in 1960 for her mother’s funeral. In 1963, after testifying against Apartheid before the United Nations, her South African citizenship and her right to return to the country were revoked.

It was a time worldwide, when smirking at African tribal people, or liking only to photograph the women naked, or japing over their nudity in National Geographic magazine, or speaking of their dances and profound athletic prowess in denigrating terms… was considered just fine sport by more than a few.

It was also a time, similar to today’s time, when prominent women were excoriated by the press, by the media industry and by the powers that be. Though Miriam Makeba sang with Dizzy Gillespie in concert in 1991, it was her marriage to Trinidadian civil rights activist and Black Panthers leader Stokely Carmichael in 1968, that was not only ‘controversial’ in the US, but also caused ‘the men who ran the shows’ to cancel her record deals and tours.

The couple moved to Guinea then, but Makeba and Carmichael separated in 1973. She continued to perform in some parts of Africa where she was allowed, and in South America and Europe. Makeba also served Guinean delegate to the United Nations, for which she won the Dag Hammarskjöld Peace Prize in 1986.

After the death of her only daughter Bongi Makeba in 1985, she moved to Brussels. In 1987, she appeared in Paul Simon’s Graceland tour.

Nelson Mandela persuaded her to return to South Africa in 1990. In 1992 she starred in the film Sarafina!, about the 1976 Soweto youth uprisings. She also was in the 2002 documentary Amandla!: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony in which she and others recalled the days of Apartheid.

Oddly, but perhaps not so oddly for the times, there is a Letter to the Editor of TIME magazine from Makeba, published in TIME in 1960. It is not her letter that is odd, but the TIME Editor’s note appended to it, seemingly taking a har-har jab at something that, amongst tribal people, is considered sacred.

Makeba wrote about her actual and beautiful long tribal names:
“There was a slight error, which concerns my African name, and if I may, I would like to spell it correctly for you:

“A child takes the first name of all his male ancestors. Often following the first name is a descriptive word or two, telling about the character of the person, making a true African name somewhat like a story.”

MIRIAM MAKEBA

And the TIME Editor wrote directly below her letter in print:

“Freely translated, the descriptive word or two in Miriam Makeba’s name say: “There is a saying that after dinner, the Xosa (sic) kick the dishes.”—ED.”

There’s something to be said and more than once about a woman who kept singing, no matter who else said what else.

I shall sing, sing my song
Be it right, be it wrong
In the night, in the day
any way
any way
kosi Sikeleli Africa
Malup hakanyiswu phondolwayo
Yiswa imithanda zo yethu
Nkosi Sikelela
Thina lusapolwayo.

and this was one of her songs too:

The river come down
The river come down
River come down
I can’t cross over
Why-o, why-o, why-o
I can’t cross over

I wanted to go down
To the other side of town
There was water all around
And I couldn’t cross over
Why-o, why-o, why-o
I can’t cross over

Miriam Makeba died of a heart attack today at age 76 directly after a concert. Sang her way through the lockes. Crossed over that river just fine at last.