Mama Africa

Miriam Makeba (4 March 1932 – 10 November 2008), nicknamed Mama Africa, was a Grammy Award winning South African singer and civil rights activist.
In the 1960s she was the first artist from Africa to popularize African music in the U.S. and around the world. She is best known for the song "Pata Pata", first recorded in 1957 and released in the U.S. in 1967. She recorded and toured with many popular artists, such as Harry Belafonte, Paul Simon, and her former husband Hugh Masekela.

She actively campaigned against the South African system of apartheid. As a result, the South African government revoked her citizenship and right of return. After the end of apartheid she returned home. She died on 10 November 2008 after performing in a concert organized to support writer Roberto Saviano in his stand against the Camorra, a mafia-like organization local to the Region of Campania.

Zenzile Miriam Makeba was born in Johannesburg in 1932. Her mother was a Swazi sangoma (traditional healer-herbalist). Her father, who died when she was six years old, was a Xhosa. When she was eighteen days old, her mother was arrested for selling umqombothi, an African homemade beer brewed from malt and cornmeal. Her mother was sentenced to a six-month prison term, so Miriam spent her first six months of life in jail.As a child, she sang in the choir of the Kilmerton Training Institute in Pretoria, a primary school that she attended for eight years.

At the age of seventeen, Makeba gave birth to her only child, Bongi Makeba. She was then diagnosed with breast cancer, and her first husband left her shortly afterwards.

Her professional career began in the 1950s when she was featured in the South African jazz group the Manhattan Brothers, and appeared for the first time on a poster. She left the Manhattan Brothers to record with her all-woman group, The Skylarks,singing a blend of jazz and traditional melodies of South Africa. As early as 1956, she released the single "Pata Pata". The single was played on all the radio stations and made her known throughout South Africa. Although she was a successful recording artist, she only received a few dollars for each recording session and no provisional royalties, and was keen to leave home.

She had a short-lived marriage in 1959.Her break came in that year when she had a short guest appearance in Come Back, Africa, an anti-apartheid documentary produced and directed by American independent filmmaker Lionel Rogosin. The short cameo made an enormous impression on the viewers and Lionel Rogosin managed to organise a visa for her to attend the première of the film at the twenty-fourth Venice Film Festival in Italy, where the film won the prestigious Critics' Award.That year, Makeba sang the lead female role in the Broadway-inspired South African musical King Kong,alongside Hugh Masekela, who she married in 1964.She made her US debut on 1 November 1959, on The Steve Allen Show.

Makeba then travelled to London where she met Harry Belafonte, who assisted her in gaining entry to the United States and achieving fame there.When she tried to return to South Africa in 1960 for her mother's funeral, she discovered that her South African passport had been cancelled.She signed with RCA Records and released Miriam Makeba, her first U.S. studio album, in 1960. In 1962, Makeba and Belafonte sang at John F. Kennedy's birthday party at Madison Square Garden, but Makeba did not go to the aftershow party because she was ill. President Kennedy insisted on meeting her, so Belafonte sent a car to pick her up and she met the President of the United States.In 1963, Makeba released her second studio album for RCA, The World of Miriam Makeba. The album, an early example of world music, peaked at number eighty-six on the Billboard 200. Later that year, after testifying against apartheid before the United Nations, her South African citizenship and her right to return to the country were revoked.She was a woman without a country, but the world came to her aid, and Guinea, Belgium and Ghana issued her international passports, and she became, in effect, a citizen of the world. In her life, she had nine passports,[2] and was granted honorary citizenship in ten countries.

In 1966 Makeba received the Grammy Award for Best Folk Recording together with Harry Belafonte for An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba.The album dealt with the political plight of black South Africans under apartheid, and it was one of the first American albums to present traditional Zulu, Sotho and Swahili songs in an authentic setting. From the time of her New York debut at the Village Vanguard, her fame and reputation grew. She released many of her most famous hits in the United States, including "The Click Song" ("Qongqothwane" in Xhosa) and "Malaika". Timecalled her the "most exciting new singing talent to appear in many years," and Newsweekcompared her voice to "the smoky tones and delicate phrasing" of Ella Fitzgerald and the "intimate warmth" of Frank Sinatra.[2]Despite the success that made her a star in the U.S., she wore no makeup and refused to curl her hair for shows, thus establishing a style that would come to be known internationally as the "Afro look". In 1967, more than ten years after she wrote the song, the single "Pata Pata" was released in the United States and became a worldwide hit.