Miriam Makeba – Song:"African Sunset" – Singer/Songwriter/Actress/Civil Rights Activist

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. Born in Johannesburg to Swazi and Xhosa parents, Miriam 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, Miriam 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. Miriam Makeba’s career flourished in the United States, and she released several albums and songs, her most popular being “Pata Pata” (1967). Along with Harry Belafonte she received a Grammy Award for her 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. As a result, she lost support among white Americans. The US government cancelled her visa while she was travelling abroad, leading her and Stokely Carmichael to move 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, Miriam 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 a UN goodwill ambassador in 1999, and campaigned for humanitarian causes. She died of a heart attack during a 2008 concert in Italy.
Miriam 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. She also 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.” 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. Johannesburg musician Dolly Rathebe was an early influence on Miriam Makeba’s music, as were female jazz singers from the US. Historian David Coplan writes that the “African jazz” made popular by Miriam 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”. The music that she performed was described by British writer Robin Denselow as a “unique blend of rousing township styles and jazz-influenced balladry”. Miriam Makeba was known for having a dynamic vocal range, and was described as having an emotional awareness during her performances. She occasionally danced during her shows, and was described as having a sensuous presence on stage. 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.” 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.” 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 Miriam Makeba had sung in Sophia Town, had been prohibited from recording in English. Miriam Makeba songs in African languages have been described as reaffirming black pride.

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