Miriam Makeba

After spending thirty years away from her homeland in exile, Miriam Makeba's homecoming to South Africa drew celebrations that likened her arrival to a monarch reclaiming her throne. The reaction proved apt, since Makeba stands as the foremost female singer to arise from South Africa. Known as the Empress of African Song and Mama Africa, she introduced African sounds to worldwide listeners during the 1960s. Close to five decades following her first recordings alongside the Manhattan Brothers, she has sustained a vital presence in the advancement of African music.

Struggle has defined Makeba's path from the outset. Born to a sangoma, the traditional mystic healer within the Xhosa community, she endured six months of imprisonment alongside her mother during the year of her birth. Endowed with an expressive vocal timbre, she cut her first single, "Lakutshona Llange," while performing with the Manhattan Brothers in 1953. Though she departed to establish the all-female Skylarks in 1958, she rejoined several Manhattan Brothers members upon taking the principal female part in the 1959 stage adaptation of King Kong, which recounted the downfall of Black African boxer Ezekiel "King Kong" Dlamani. That year she also embarked on an eighteen-month trek across South Africa with Alf Herbert's African Jazz and Variety revue and appeared in the documentary Come Back Africa. These accomplishments prompted offers to appear throughout Europe and the United States.

The Black community welcomed Makeba warmly. Her emblematic piece "Pata Pata," composed by Dorothy Masuka and first tracked in South Africa during 1956, later achieved widespread success across the U.S. in 1967. Late in 1959 she held a four-week engagement at The Village Vanguard in New York. She subsequently joined Harry Belafonte onstage during his landmark Carnegie Hall appearances; the resulting double album, issued in 1960, earned a Grammy Award. Makeba periodically resumed her partnership with Belafonte, including the 1972 release Belafonte & Miriam Makeba, and again participated as a featured guest at the Harry Belafonte Tribute held at Madison Square Garden in 1997.

Her vocal triumphs were matched by candid opposition to apartheid. South Africa's government stripped her of citizenship in 1960, compelling her to live for the following three decades as a "citizen of the world." She was awarded the Dag Hammerskjold Peace Prize in 1968. After wedding activist Stokely Carmichael, numerous bookings were withdrawn and her RCA contract was terminated, compounding professional obstacles. At President Sekou Toure's invitation she settled in Guinea and served as that nation's United Nations delegate, addressing the General Assembly on apartheid's atrocities in both 1964 and 1975.

Makeba maintained a steady musical output across subsequent years. In 1975 she issued the album A Promise alongside Joe Sample, Stix Hooper, Arthur Adams, and David T. Walker of the Crusaders. She took part in Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo's global Graceland tour throughout 1987 and 1988, then joined Odetta and Nina Simone on the One Nation tour two years afterward.

Her memoir Miriam: My Story appeared in English in 1988 and was later rendered into German, French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese. With Nelson Mandela's liberation from prison, Makeba reentered South Africa in December 1990 and delivered her initial homeland concert in three decades during April 1991. She portrayed Sarafina's mother in the award-winning South African musical Sarafina in 1992. Two years afterward she rejoined her former spouse, trumpeter Hugh Masekela, for the Tour of Hope. In 1995 she established a charitable foundation supporting South African women and performed at the Vatican's Nevi Hall for the global telecast Christmas in the Vatican. Her first studio recording in ten years, Homeland, reached stores in 2000.