Singer/Activist Miriam Makeba Dies at 76

Recently, Africa lost one of its greatest voices. We all lost one of our greatest voices, with the death of Miriam Makeba, known affectionately as "Mama Africa." She collapsed onstage singing in support of Roberto Saviano, an Italian journalist whose life has been threatened by organized crime figures for his reporting, and she died the next day. It was only the latest of her human rights efforts; it certainly was not the first.

Miriam Makeba was born on March 4, 1932 in Johannesburg, South Africa. She performed with various groups and participated in the 1959 anti-apartheid documentary, Come Back, Africa (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049087). She attended its premiere at the Venice Film Festival in 1959, and the following year, when she tried to return to South Africa for her mother's funeral, she learned that the South african government had revoked her passport, and she was not allowed into the country. By 1963, her South African citizenship was also revoked, after she spoke out against apartheid (the South African government's racial policy) at the United Nations.

Miriam Makeba, a woman without a country, became a woman welcomed in many countries, honored by leaders as diverse as John F. Kennedy and Fidel Castro (http://www.music.org.za/artist.asp?id=101). Although she had been warmly received in the United States, after she married Stokely Carmichael (associated with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee) in 1968, recording and concert opportunities for Miriam Makeba disappeared. She and her husband moved to Guinea, and she continued to perform around the world, except in the United States, even after their marriage ended in the early 1970s.

In 1990, Miriam Makeba returned to a very different South Africa from the one which she had left three decades previously, at the invitation of Nelson Mandela. She continued to perform, to travel, and to lend her voice to those who have no voices. She began supporting drug rehabilitation programs and care for those suffering from HIV/AIDS. In March 2008, she visited the Democratic Republic of Congo, where she spoke out about the violence to women in that country. November 2008 found her in Italy to support a crusading journalist.

Miriam Makeba denied that she was a politician, and her songs do not carry the political weight of protest songs from the United States. Since she almost always sang in African languages, the message of her words would have been lost to many of us. But the message of her music and her personality come through loud and clear. After singing her best known song, "Pata Pata" in the Italian concert, she collapsed and died the next day. One of her stirring performances of that song can be seen and heard on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCc61z9IFu4).

Her spoken commentaries rooted her often joyful songs in the dreary reality of life for black South Africans, an amazing joy with an even more amazing lack of bitterness, as these two songs (on YouTube) illustrate: "Khawuleza" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V74f9eIi9c0) and "Mayibuye" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0t4Yibsh64).

Although a very powerful singer on her own, Miriam Makeba made some memorable collaborations, beginning with her first husband, musician Hugh Masekela (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJiqvPMQXAc) and Paul Simon (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB26L8nbRiw). Her best-known collaboration was with Harry Belafonte, who brought her to international attention and collaborated with her on the 1965 album, An Evening With Belafonte/Makeba, for which they shared a Grammy. Unfortunately, the only recording of the Makeba/Belafonte duo that I could find online was as background to an interview with Harry Belafonte (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96869372).

One of Miriam Makeba's songs has a special place in the hearts of many people, including teachers of phonetics. It is "Qongqothwane," also known as "The Click Song," because it includes several of the "clicks," distinctive sounds heard in Xhosa and some others of the more than one thousand languages spoken in Africa. On the YouTube page for one video of the song, there are comments by people who heard the song in college linguistic classes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHxkiXALQjU), but in this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Mwh9z58iAU), Makeba introduces the song by discussing the clicks, which, as she says, are not noise but instead her language.

Africa is a vast continent, with over fifty countries and hundreds of cultures and ethnic groups, and Miriam Makeba embraced the entire continent, not just her native South Africa, as her home - a view known as pan-Africanism. To be "Mama Africa," then was quite a responsibility. Interestingly, symbolically, she wanted to be cremated and to have her ashes spread at sea (a wish which has been granted). Apparently, she did not want to be confined to Africa. I hope that I won't be just another white cultural imperialist trying to exploit African treasures to say that she was even larger than Africa. With her warm heart and deep soul, with that disarming smile and overpowering voice, she was in some way, at least by her example of compassion and commitment, the mother of us all.