V. Muna Kangsen
Miriam Zenzile Makeba was born on March 4, 1932, in a segregated township in the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa, the daughter of a sangoma, a traditional healer, and a coal miner father. Makeba began singing in a church choir in her youth, but gained national attention as a backup vocalist for the Manhattan Brothers, a popular South African group in the in the 1950’s and 1960’s still recording today. Although Makeba’s brief stay with the Manhattan brothers yielded memorable recordings like Lovely Lies, she left the group in 1959 to join the Skylarks, an all female group with which she earned some local and regional success in Southern Africa.
In 1959, Makeba secured the female lead role in the show, King Kong, a Broadway-inspired South African musical. She also drew the ire of the apartheid government for her participation in Come Back Africa, a documentary critical of the apartheid system. When she attended the documentary’s opening in the Venice Film Festival in 1962, the government revoked her right of reentry into South Africa and Makeba became an exile.
Makeba found refuge in the US in the early 1960’s where, emboldened by the government’s revoking of her passport, she testified against the South African government to the UN Commission on Decolonization, and its Commission on Apartheid. Her friendship and collaboration with Harry Belafonte yielded a Grammy winning album “An Evening with Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba”, which featured a remake of the famous Click Song, a track Makeba composed in the mid 1950’s.
Makeba’s US honeymoon came to an abrupt end in 1962 when she married Black Nationalist leader, Stokely Carmicheal. Tour dates where abruptly cancelled without notice. Intimidation from various detractors including the US government forced Makeba and Carmicheal into exile in Guinea-Conakry, where the couple was well received by Guinea’s nationalist leader, Ahmed Sekou Toure.
While in Guinea, Makeba collaborated with Guinea’s national orchestra, in compositions often peppered with tenets of Manding praise songs. The Guinea Years, a collection of recordings from Makeba’s years of exile in Guinea, contain some of her best work.
Although Makeba is known worldwide for her music, her humanitarian activism has earned her international acclaim. In 1986, she was awarded the Dag Hammarskjold peace prize for her humanitarian work. She has held several UN ambassadorships. Most recently, she was an ambassador of the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization. She has also served in a similar capacity with the United Nations Children Emergency Fund, UNICEF. Upon her return to South Africa in 1991 from thirty years of exile, Makeba inaugurated the Makeba Home for Girls. The home, which provides shelter and vocational training to disadvantaged adolescent girls, is supported in large measure by Makeba’s generosity and by donations from a variety of local and international sources. Dubbed “Mama Africa” by her fans, Miriam Makeba is committed, through the Makeba Home for Girls, to provide opportunities to girls, who remain a marginalized constituency in post-Apartheid South Africa.
In 2005 she released Reflections, a well-received album, on the Headsup label. The album, a retrospective of sorts, contains bold and successful remakes of Makeba classics such as the Click Song and Pata Pata, infused with a salsa flavor. African Convention, an upbeat number written by Hugh Masekela, a longtime collaborator and former husband, is an upbeat fusion between township jazz and mbaqanga, two popular local South African styles. Rumors are rife about the eminent release of another retrospective.
Today, Makeba’s illustrious musical career and inspiring personal story remains a source of inspiration to many across the world, and a sign post of the depravity into which societies degenerate when value is assigned to differences of color and gender. In Makeba’s music, apartheid found a foe it could not outlive.
I spoke to Makeba some time ago in 2006. Below are excerpts from our conversation.
Since your return home, you have been preoccupied with opening a home for destitute girls, is the home operational yet?
Yes it is. It is in a place called Presidents peak in-------. We have 16 girls now, although the house can take 18. The land around it is very vast, so we need all you to give us money to build more shelter for the girls, because we have a great need.
How can your fans worldwide help in realizing this goal?
I can give you our bank account number for The Makeba Rehab and Education Center for Girls it is with First National Bank, and the account number is 56311156454.
What type of training is being provided to these girls?
They have all been put back into school. We have two who are in technical school, who are doing business management. The youngest is 11, and she is also in school. On Saturdays we send them to place called makinta, where they learn art, or whatever interests them, just to keep them busy on weekends. On Sundays, they go to church. Different counselors are counseling them; people come to talk to them about life. Girls are the future mothers of our society, and it is important that we focus on their well-being.
You are often described as ‘Mama Africa’, is this appellation an inspiration for your work with the girls?
I am old mother, but they are still young, so they must be taken care of.
Are you going to be doing anything with Boys, why did you focus on girls?
There are a lot of homes for boys, but very few for girls, that is why I chose to do for girls.
You have also been working as a food ambassador for the FAO.
Yes, president Thabo Mbeki also named me South Africa’s goodwill ambassador. It is the first of its kind in South Africa. The first thing I did as goodwill ambassador was to arrange an exchange between West African women, and South African women from our nine provinces. The foreign minister Mrs. Zuma helped to get the funds, and we brought thirty women from Mali, Togo, and Senegal to meet with South African women from our nine provinces, three from each province.
In total, thirty-six women met for 15 days in a hotel here in Johannesburg, and exchanged skills, and also just talked about the problems faced by women in their respective countries. We hope to keep it going. There is a possibility that the next meeting might be in Senegal. We started small, but if we are allowed to grow, we will include women from other parts of Africa as well. It is important for the women of Africa to meet and talk about common problems, to talk about what the African renaissance means, and what Nepad (New Partnership for African Development) means, and see how we can access help from organizations such as Nepad as women.
The theme of Unity and the Spirit of collaboration has been a recurrent theme in your music.
It is very much the theme of our President, President Thabo Mbeki, whose passion if for Africa to work together, and for Africans to get up and do things for us. We are trying as women to do things for ourselves.
For about thirty years you lived in exile. Was your music affected in any way by this long stay abroad?
I was physically away from home, but mentally and emotionally, I was always home. It was hard to be away from home, but I am glad that I am home now. I will be traveling to Germany and Italy very soon, and when I travel, I don’t like to stay away from home for too long.
I read an interview where you said you had to travel all over to work, because there is no work for artists in South Africa. Has the situation changed?
Well there is a lot of work here for younger and older musicians now. Our ministry of Culture has now really embarked on changing things for artists, and it is getting much better. We just have to organize ourselves as artists, and then things will be better.
Your latest album is called “Reflections” and it contains remakes of Makeba classics such as “pata pata”, “click song”, were you at all hesitant to rework these songs, given that they were so successful in their original format?
The record company requested those songs. Believe me, I didn’t want to do them, but they requested them, because they said people will like them, people remember me through those songs, and so I did a remake of them. I titled the album reflection because, I am reflecting of my music career. Some of the songs on the album, I did thirty years ago, when I was in exile. I wanted people here at home to hear some of the songs that I was singing during my absence from home, and the absence of my recordings, which were banned. That is why we decided to call it reflections.
The album covers a lot of ground in terms of style and genre.
Yes it does. There is of course Pata Pata, and the Click Song, but there are also songs like Iyaguduza, Mas Que Nada, and Comme Une Symphonie D’Amour, which I sang during the early years of my career.
How long did it take you to record the album?
It took us about a month, on and off, because I was traveling a lot, and when I return, I’ll go straight to the studio, and record. I was also not feeling well; I had bronchitis, and so it took a little bit of time. Sometimes I was able to go into the studio, and sometimes I couldn’t because of the bronchitis. The musicians were quite understanding, and I think they did a wonderful job.
Are you planning any tours to promote the album?
I am leaving on Friday. I am going to Germany, and to Italy.
Is there a North American trip planned in the future?
Not now. They wanted me to come and do a promotional tour, but I can’t because I am doing a lot of things here. I was also scheduled to go to a festival in Atlanta, but I was not able to go. The last time I was in the US, I was in Los Angeles in the Hollywood Bowl, where I did five songs accompanied by the Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra. That was in November last year.
There are some cover songs in Reflections, which I think you actually render better than the original artists.
I am glad to hear that you think so. Thank you very much. You are damned and praised, or encouraged or discouraged by those who listen to you, and those who come to applaud you. And to me, those people are very important.
When you reflect about your musical career, what are the high and low points that come to mind?
The high points will be my travels: my music afforded me the opportunity to travel around the world and meet different people, with different cultures, and that was very educational for me to share in peoples cultures, their sorrows and joys. The lowest point was not being able to come home; that was very sad. I couldn’t go to bury my mother. Those were the lows. There are many things that I regret that I would like to change if I can live again. But you know, we don’t go back, we move forward and closer to the grave. I guess I’ll never have a chance to change the things that I regret.
Your latest album Reflections was released on the Tenth anniversary of South Africa’s independence. Was this planned or merely coincidental?
It was coincidental.
There couldn’t have been a better coincidence because it helped to make people reflect on the past, as well as the road ahead.
Yes, all Africans on this continent of ours, we have a lot of work to do, to try and right the wrongs of the past, to eradicate poverty, which is at the bottom of everything because when people are poor they don’t eat well, they don’t sleep well, and they are vulnerable to lots of other problems.
V. Muna Kangsen is a Cameroon born writer and activist. He lives in the Boston area. This article original appeared in the erstwhile soulafrica.com in 2006.
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