R.I.P.: Miriam Makeba

Miriam Makeba
(born March 4, 1932, Johannesburg/South Africa;
died November 9, 2008, Castel Volturno/Italy)

I was four years old when "Pata Pata" exploded in the airwaves all over the world, including Brazil, where it received heavy airplay and soon became a hit. I immediately asked some relative to buy the single (issued on the Reprise label) for me. "Pata Pata" reached the Billboard charts, peaking at # 7 among the Black singles and # 12 among the Pop singles in 1967.

I had no idea of who Miriam Makeba was, nor that the nee version of the song (written by Dorothy Masuka and previously recorded by Miriam in 1956, while she still leaved in South Africa) had been arranged by a Brazilian musician, Sivuca, the genius with whom I would have the chance to work many decades later and who would become one of my main idols in 1973, after I heard his version of "Ain't No Sunshine" and immediately began to collect all his albums.

The last Miriam Makeba item I bought (at the Virgin shop in Paris), during one of my trips to Europe in 2005, was the DVD "A Night in Tunisia/Dizzy Gillespie & Miriam Makeba w/ The United Nation Orchestra", which includes Brazilian trumpet player Claudio Roditi, another dear friend. This DVD will be featured in the previous post (see below).

(Miriam Makeba with Bill Salter & Sivuca)

There's also another very interesting DVD, titled "Miriam Makeba Live at Bern's Salonger", on which she's backed by Sivuca (acoustic guitar & accordion), Bill Salter (acoustic bass) and Leopoldo Fleming on percussion. One of the songs is Jorge Ben's "Chove Chuva", arranged by Sivuca, of course. From January 17 to February 28, 1966, Miriam Makeba performed for the first time in Sweden at the Bern's Salonger in Stockholm. The performance and interview on this DVD, originally broadcast on Swedish TV and saved for posterity by a long-time fan catches her at the absolute peak of her powers.

(Miriam Makeba & Sivuca)

Makeba, known as "Mama Africa" since she ranked as South Africa's greatest musical ambassadress, worked as a jazz singer in 1950s South Africa and was one of the first South African musicians to tour Western countries in the 1960s. At the time of "Pata Pata", her musical director was Sivuca, who also played accordion in the band that featured bassist Bill Salter, whom later would co-write such hits as "Just The Two of Us," "Where is the Love?" and "Mister Magic."

Born in 1932, Miriam had weathered the death of her father, a bout against breast cancer, childbirth and the first five marriages before she turned 20... From her start in a church choir, she went on to sing under the influence of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, her favorite jazz singers. Makeba left the popular Manhattan Brothers group to join the traveling show "African Jazz and Variety", which toured Southern Africa for 18 months. Then, she became the lead vocalist in the "King Kong" show, and appeared in the film "Come Back Africa".

She always was outspoken against Apartheid and was barred from re-entry to her home country in 1960. After the South African government cancelled her passport, she spent decades in exile, living mostly in the United States. Suddenly she became an international star. An album titled "An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba" (although they only perform together in 2 songs and that was a studio date, not a live recording) won a Grammy in 1965 as "Best Folk Performance". Then she scored a big hit with "Pata, Pata" in 1967.

Later, Miriam had to move to Guinea, where she received a diplomat's passport and retreated for nine years after her marriage to the Black Power activist Stokely Carmichael in 1968 soured her reputation with the American media and the music industry. Makeba wrote in her autobiography that music helped her wrestle the dangerous amadlozi spirits her mother passed on to her. She was Paul Simon's guest during some concerts of his "Graceland" tour in 1986. Makeba dedicated her 1988 album "Sangoma" to her mother. After turmoil, tragedy and controversy, she returned to a free South Africa as a favorite daughter in 1990, but continued to tour worldwide not only as a solo artist, as well with Dizzy Gillespie & The United Nation Orchestra, and with Odetta and Nina Simone on the "One Nation" tour.

She also took part of the South African award-winning musical "Sarafina," in the role of Sarafina's mother in 1992. Two years later, she reunited with her first husband, trumpeter Hugh Masekela, for the "Tour Of Hope," and appeared as special guest in a tribute to Harry Belafonte Tribute at Madison Square Garden (NYC) in 1997. One of her last albums, "Homeland", received a Grammy nomination in 2001.
***********
The obituary published minutes ago in the NY Times follows:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/world/africa/11makeba.html?_r=1&ref=arts&oref=slogin

Miriam Makeba, 76, Singer and Activist, Dies
By ALAN COWELL
Published: November 10, 2008

LONDON — Miriam Makeba, a South African singer whose voice stirred hopes of freedom among millions in her own country though her music was formally banned by the apartheid authorities she struggled against, died early Monday after performing at a concert in Italy. She was 76.

The Associated Press quoted hospital authorities as saying she died following a heart attack after being brought to a hospital in Castel Volturno near Naples in southern Italy. She had been singing at a concert in support of Roberto Saviano, an author who has received death threats after writing about organized crime. Ms. Makeba collapsed as she was leaving the stage, the South African authorities said. She died at the private Pineta Grande clinic in Castel Volturno, where she was brought by ambulance, according to a physcian on duty there. Efforts to resuscitate her failed, the doctor said, speaking in return for anonymity under hospital rules.

Although Ms. Makeba had been weakened by osteoarthritis, her death stunned many in South Africa, where she stood as an enduring emblem of the travails of black people under the apartheid system of racial segregation that ended with the release from prison of Nelson Mandela in 1990 and the country’s first fully democratic elections in 1994.

In a statement on Monday, Mr. Mandela said the death “of our beloved Miriam has saddened us and our nation.”

He continued: “Her haunting melodies gave voice to the pain of exile and dislocation which she felt for 31 long years. At the same time, her music inspired a powerful sense of hope in all of us.”

“She was South Africa’s first lady of song and so richly deserved the title of Mama Afrika. She was a mother to our struggle and to the young nation of ours,” Mr. Mandela is one of many tributes from South African leaders.

“One of the greatest songstresses of our time has ceased to sing,” Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said in a statement. “Throughout her life, Mama Makeba communicated a positive message to the world about the struggle of the people of South Africa and the certainty of victory over the dark forces of apartheid and colonialism through the art of song.”

Widely known as “Mama Africa”, she had been a prominent exiled opponent of apartheid since the South African authorities revoked her passport in 1960 and refused to allow her to return after she traveled abroad. She was prevented from attending her mother’s funeral after touring in the United States.

For 31 years, Ms. Makeba lived in exile, variously in the United States, France, Guinea and Belgium. South Africa’s state broadcasters banned her music after she spoke out against apartheid at the United Nations in 1976 — the year of the Soweto uprising that accelerated the demands of the black majority for democratic change.

“I never understood why I couldn’t come home,” Ms. Makeba said upon her return at an emotional homecoming in Johannesburg in 1990 as the apartheid system began to crumble, according to The Associated Press. “I never committed any crime.”

Music was a central part of the struggle against apartheid. The South African authorities of the era exercised strict censorship of many forms of expression, while many foreign entertainers discouraged performances in South Africa in an attempt to isolate the white authorities and show their opposition to apartheid.

From exile she acted as a constant reminder of the events in her homeland as the white authorities struggled to contain or pre-empt unrest among the black majority.

Ms. Makeba wrote in 1987: “I kept my culture. I kept the music of my roots. Through my music I became this voice and image of Africa, and the people, without even realizing.”

She was married several times and her husbands included the American black activist Stokely Carmichael, with whom she lived in Guinea, and the jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela, who also spent many years in exile.

In the United States she became a star, touring with Harry Belafonte in the 1960s and winning a Grammy award with him in 1965. Such was her following and fame that she sang in 1962 at the birthday party of President John F. Kennedy. She also performed with Paul Simon on his Graceland concert in Zimbabwe in 1987.

But she fell afoul of the U.S. music industry because of her marriage to Mr. Carmichael and her decision to live in Guinea.

In one of her last interviews, in May 2008 with the British music critic Robin Denselow, she said she found her concerts in the United States . being cancelled. “It was not a ban from the government. It was a cancellation by people who felt I should not be with Stokely because he was a rebel to them. I didn’t care about that. He was somebody I loved, who loved me, and it was my life,” she said.

Ms. Makeba was born in Johannesburg on March 4, 1932, the daughter of a Swazi mother and a father from the Xhosa people who live mainly in the eastern Cape region of South Africa. She became known to South Africans in the Sophiatown district of Johannesburg in the 1950s.

According to Agence France-Presse, she was often short of money and could not afford to buy a coffin when her only daughter, Bondi, died aged 36 in 1985. She buried her alone, barring a handful of journalists from covering the funeral.

She was particularly renowned for her performances of songs such as what was known as the Click Song — named for a clicking sound in her native tongue — or “Qongoqothwane,” and Pata Pata, meaning Touch Touch in Xhosa. Her style of singing was widely interpreted as a blend of black township rhythms, jazz and folk music.

In her interview in 2008, Ms. Makeba said: “I’m not a political singer. I don’t know what the word means. 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.”

(Celia W. Dugger contributed reporting from Johannesburg and Rachel Donadio from Rome.)