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Wednesday, Jan 7, 2009
"Mama Africa" is back in the USA with a new CD, a summer tour and a lot to say.
May 15, 2000 | South African singing legend Miriam Makeba first came to the U.S. in 1959 for a gig at the Village Vanguard, then New York's hippest jazz spot. Soon she was the toast of the town, attracting Miles Davis, Sidney Poitier and even Elizabeth Taylor and Bing Crosby to her shows.
In 1960, as her mother lay dying, Makeba applied for a visa to return home for a visit, and was denied -- as she would be until the end of apartheid. In its clumsy attempt to marginalize the indefatigable singer, the white South African government inadvertently granted Makeba a three-decade run as black South Africa's de facto ambassador to the Western world, where she acquired the appellation "Mama Africa."
Under the tutelage of Harry Belafonte, Makeba pleaded the case of her people to audiences across America during the height of this nation's civil rights struggle. In 1962, she performed at President Kennedy's famous birthday party in Madison Square Garden (also on the bill that night: Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy Birthday"). By 1967, she had a top-selling song on the Billboard singles charts; today that infectious dance tune, "Pata Pata," has found new life in commercials, and has been re-recorded for her new CD.
In 1968, after two previous marriages (one to trumpet legend Hugh Masekela), Makeba married controversial black activist Stokely Carmichael and lost her spot as toast of the town. She was merely toast. Her gigs were canceled and her career in the United States tanked until the strife in South Africa captured the American imagination during the 1980s. By then, her marriage to Carmichael, who died in 1998 of prostate cancer, was over, and she had lost her only child, her daughter Bongi, to complications of the daughter's delivery of a stillborn baby.
After 30 years in exile, Makeba returned to South Africa at the close of 1990, and she makes her home there today. Last month, Putamayo World Music released "Homeland," her first new recording in six years. It's a mix of strong, captivating African-language pieces, and a few English-language songs in the American pop vein.
At 68, Makeba's voice has grown even richer and more commanding -- qualities tempered by a crackliness that has come with age. This is particularly apparent on the remake of "Pata Pata," a duet with her sweet-voiced granddaughter, Zenzi Lee. (Makeba's grandson, Nelson Lee, also appears on "Homeland.") In the spoken bits of the song, Makeba exudes a sort of bemused world-weariness, an attitude that carries into our conversation when I ask her about her decision to re-record the song.
"I didn't decide that," she insists. It was the idea of her producer, Cedric Samson, she says.
"I said, 'No, man -- 'Pata Pata' since 1956!'" (Makeba first recorded the song in South Africa 11 years before it made the charts in the U.S.)
Samson convinced her to do it "just for fun," she explains, so they recorded it live in the studio in a couple of takes. The beat has been slowed down to hip-hop standards, the drums are synthesized and the background vocals have acquired a bluesy bend.
Makeba has always rejected the label of political singer or political activist, countering the claim with the assertion that she merely conveys the truth. "Everybody now admits that apartheid was wrong, and all I did was tell the people who wanted to know where I come from how we lived in South Africa. I just told the world the truth. And if my truth then becomes political, I can't do anything about that."
"And your marriage to Carmichael was not, as many claimed, a political statement?"
"How can anybody say that? In this country, for instance, there are people, couples [where] one is Republican and one is Democrat. But no one looks at that as anything. I never seconded any of Stokely's statements. I mean, he went out there and made his own statements, and he believed in what he believed in. And I can say he died believing in that. He never changed."
The pain of what happened to her career in the wake of that marriage is still apparently raw; she still seems shocked that her then-husband's advocacy of taking up arms against the white man should have had any bearing on her own fortunes, especially since she never commented on U.S. domestic politics. And she is right; it was unjust. But her surprise at the image-conscious music industry's response to her marriage seems startlingly naive, given the convulsions over race experienced throughout American society during the 1960s, not to mention the subordinate role expected of wives to husbands at that time.
"Did you get to see Carmichael before he died?" I ask.
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