Zenzile Miriam Makeba
Zenzile Miriam Makeba (1932-2008), sometimes called Mama Africa, was a South African musician and civil rights activist.
Born in Prospect, South Africa to a Swazi mother and a Xhosa father, Makeba's early life was full of difficult events. When she was 18 days old, her mother was arrested, so Makeba spent the first six months of her life with her mother in jail. After moving to Transvaal, her father died and Makeba worked as a nanny. In 1949, she married a policeman, who beat her and then left her. She also had both breast and cervical cancer.
Makeba was interested in music from a young age--she sang in church in four languages (English, Xhosa, Sotho, and Zulu). She liked both South African and African American songs, and grew up listening to records of Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald. She started singing professionally as the only woman in men's groups, like the Cuban Brothers and the Manhattan Brothers. Makeba eventually joined the all-female group the Skylarks, where she became famous, though she received no royalties from this work.
She became internationally famous for her voice and her on-screen appearances, and Makeba travelled and lived in Europe and North America. In 1960, when attempting to return to South Africa for family funerals, Makeba discovered her South African passport had been cancelled and she was exile from her home country. Makeba continued to sing and and fight against South African apartheid in the United States, where she was critically successful but commercially unpopular. Her activism caused her to be declared a stateless person, as her South African citizenship was revoked, but throughout her life was granted honorary citizenship in ten countries.
Makeba became a diplomat and a symbol of African independence. She was invited to sing at many countries' independence ceremonies, including Kenya, Angola, Zambia, Tanganyika (now Tanzania), and Mozambique. She was a delegate to the United Nations and met many politicians.
In 1990, Makeba returned to South Africa. Mandela, whom she has also met personally, helped convince her to come back. She spent the end of her life working, fighting, and singing. She suffered a heart attack on stage in Italy, and could not be revived. She was remember as a genre-spanning singer-songwriter, one of the faces of the anti-Apartheid movement, and as a woman who believed in a bright future worth the struggle. Listen to some of her most popular songs and performances 1. Qongqothwane ("The Click Song") performed live 2. Pata Pata 3. Ndodemnyama we Verwoerd 4. Miriam Makeba's 1964 Speech to the United Nations
Miriam Makeba was a shero for me! I still admire her to this day. Today I learned more of her story.
