BadGalsRadio – Roots, Riddim and Truth since 99' » Blog Archive » R.I.P. Miriam Makeba – Goodbye Mama Afrika we shall surely miss you<a href="http://badgals-radio.com/">

R.I.P. Miriam Makeba – Goodbye Mama Afrika we shall surely miss you

Singer Miriam Makeba dies aged 76

We will be presenting our tribute to Miriam Makeba on BadGalsRadio on WED 11/12/08; she will be our featured artist in this edition of The RawRootsPodcast
Bless Mama Afrika – Miriam Makeba, and bring peace to her family and loved ones.

A Luta Continua Mama Afrika !

~RE

N’Kosi Sikeleli Africa- With Miriam Makeba

Miriam Makeba was a leading symbol in the struggle against apartheid

South African singing legend Miriam Makeba has died aged 76, after being taken ill in Italy.

She had just taken part in a concert near the southern town of Caserta, the Ansa news agency reported.

The concert was on behalf of Roberto Saviano, the author of an expose of the Camorra mafia whose life has subsequently been threatened.

Miriam Makeba is taken to hospital in an ambulance near Naples

Ms Makeba appeared on Paul Simon’s Graceland tour in 1987 and in 1992 had a leading role in the film Sarafina!

Ansa said she died of a heart attack.

‘Mama Africa’

HAVE YOUR SAY

The music world has lost a legend. Africa has lost a mother

Trevor, Port Harcourt, Nigeria

Send us your comments

Ms Makeba was born in Johannesburg on 4 March 1932 and was a leading symbol in the struggle against apartheid.

Her singing career started in the 1950s as she mixed jazz with traditional South African songs.

Miriam Makeba (Mama Africa) – Khawuleza 1966

She came to international attention in 1959 during a tour of the United States with the South African group the Manhattan Brothers.

She was forced into exile soon after when her passport was revoked after starring in an anti-apartheid documentary and did not return to her native country until Nelson Mandela was released from prison.

Makeba was the first black African woman to win a Grammy Award, which she shared with Harry Belafonte in 1965.

She was African music’s first world star, says the BBC’s Richard Hamilton, blending different styles long before the phrase “world music” was coined.
Miriam Makeba and Kwame Toure' (stokely carmichael)
After her divorce from fellow South African musician Hugh Masekela she married American civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael.

It was while living in exile in the US that she released her most famous songs, Pata Pata and the Click Song.

“You sing about those things that surround you,” she said. “Our surrounding has always been that of suffering from apartheid and the racism that exists in our country. So our music has to be affected by all that.”

The Lioness Sleeps Tonight..

It was because of this dedication to her home continent that Miriam Makeba became known as Mama Africa.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE_XSfjSFTw[/youtube]

A Luta Continua – Miriam Makeba

Miriam Makeba dies in Italy

ROME, ITALY Nov 10 2008 07:17

(SA Mail and Guardian Online)

South African singer Miriam Makeba, “one of the greatest songstresses of our time”, died on Sunday night after collapsing as she left the stage following a performance in Italy, the Foreign Minister said on Monday.

“One of the greatest songstresses of our time, Miriam Makeba, has ceased to sing. Miriam Makeba, South Africa’s Goodwill Ambassador, died performing what she did best — an ability to communicate a positive message through the art of singing,” said South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

“Throughout her life, Mama Makeba communicated a positive message to the world about the struggle of the people of South Africa and the certainty of victory over the dark forces of apartheid colonialism through the art of song.”

The ministry said the 76-year-old Makeba died at the Veneto Verde hospital near Naples after performing at the Castel Volturno.

“She collapsed as she was leaving the stage. She received paramedic assistance and was rushed to hospital where she unfortunately passed away,” the ministry said in a statement.

“On behalf of our President Kgalema Motlanthe, our ambassadors and high commissioners stationed abroad, management and staff of the Department of Foreign Affairs, we convey our heartfelt condolences to members of the bereaved family,” said Dlamini-Zuma.

Makeba, affectionately known as Mama Africa, sang about Africa’s struggles for independence.

“People gave me that name. At first I said to myself: ‘Why do they want to give me that responsibility, carrying a whole continent?’ Then I understood that they did that affectionately. So I accepted. I am Mama Africa,” she told Agence France-Presse in an interview in 2005.

Makeba, whose most famous hits included Pata Pata, The Click Song (Qongqothwane in Xhosa) and Mailaka, died after taking part in a concert for Roberto Saviano, a writer threatened with death by the Mafia, the Italian news agency said.

Miriam Zenzi Makeba was born in Johannesburg on March 4 1932.

As a child, she attended a training institute in Pretoria for eight years where she first started singing.

Her professional career kicked off in the 1950s with the Manhattan Brothers, before she formed her own group, The Skylarks.

She grabbed international attention in 1959 when she starred in the anti-apartheid documentary Come Back, Africa.

She then went to London where she met Harry Belafonte. He helped her get entry to the United States, where she released many of her famous songs.

She received a Grammy Award for Best Folk Recording in 1966 with Belafonte for An Evening With Belafonte/Makeba.

The album was about black South Africans living under apartheid.

When she tried to return to South Africa, she discovered that her passport had been revoked.

She testified against apartheid before the United Nations in 1963.

She was married to musician Hugh Masekela and Trinidadian civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael, who was also the leader of the Black Panthers.

When her only daughter, Bongi Makeba, died in 1985, she moved to Brussels.

Former South African president Nelson Mandela persuaded her to return to South Africa in 1990.

She was always optimistic about post-apartheid South Africa, even though she acknowledged that it came with its own problems.

“We have only had 11 years of democracy but we are moving, we are moving forward faster than many countries who have been independent a long, long time before. We all have to do it together, all of us, found ourselves this country regardless [whether] we are black, white or whatever,” she said in an interview.

Asked who the next Makeba would be, she replied: “No, nobody can replace me as I can’t replace anyone else,” and added that she wanted to leave a memory of, simply, a “very good old lady”. – Sapa

Miriam Makeba visits rape survivors in Congo (DR)

FAO Goodwill Ambassador says support for women crucial to nation’s improvement amid fragile peace

FAO/G. Napolitano

FAO Goodwill Ambassador Miriam Makeba arrives at Kinshasa airport.

13 March, 2008, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo – Singer and activist Miriam Makeba says women survivors of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo face a “triple tragedy” of physical, psychological and social damage, undermining the country’s attempts to improve living conditions.

Makeba, who is on a four-day visit to Kinshasa in her role as FAO Goodwill Ambassador, is planning to tour small farming projects designed to help rape survivors feed their families and increase self-reliance. The women have received FAO-donated seeds, tools and agricultural training. Makeba is to be accompanied by the DRC’s Minister of Gender, Family and Child Welfare, Philomène Omatuku.

Makeba, who won the Dag Hammarskjöld Prize for Peace in 1986, called the systematic rape of women in recent years the “most horrifying feature of the complex emergency” in DRC, Africa’s third-largest country.

“Women guarantee the survival of 80 percent of the households in DRC. Yet despite their crucial role for the well-being of the family, they are frequently victims to rape and sexual violence,” Makeba said. “In the province of North Kivu alone, 27 000 cases of sex violence were recorded in 2006.”

Vast potential

The DRC has “a vast potential for economic growth,” said the South African singer, who has been an active supporter of FAO’s campaign against world hunger since her appointment as Goodwill Ambassador in 1999. “Yet 70 percent of the people have difficulty getting enough food to eat, malnutrition rates are on the rise and some 3.5 million people have died in the last 20 years as a result of violence, famine and disease.”

The FAO Emergency Coordination and Rehabilitation Unit, in collaboration with other UN agencies, non-governmental organizations and local authorities, has provided assistance to 500 000 households, or more than two million people. FAO plans to increase assistance to 800 000 households this year.

FAO projects have provided farming and fishing equipment, quality seeds and disease-free plants, and road repairs to improve access to markets. The programmes have placed priority on the most vulnerable groups, including internally displaced persons, malnourished children and ex-combatants.

Urging the international community not to forget the ongoing crisis in the DRC, Makeba said, “I would like my visit to this country to be an opportunity to renew and strengthen our commitment and ensure that innocent victims suffering from hunger have access to the necessary resources to cultivate their hope for a better life.”

Makeba’s schedule also includes a visit to a project for families affected by HIV/AIDS, meetings with high-ranking government officials and encounters with representatives of UN agencies and non-governmental organizations.

South African singing legend Makeba dies at 76

1 hour ago

ROME (AFP) — Miriam Makeba, the singer who became the musical symbol of the black struggle against apartheid, has died after collapsing at a concert in Italy. She was 76.

Makeba, nicknamed “Mama Africa” by a worldwide legion of fans and famed for hits such as “Pata Pata”, “The Click Song”, died of a heart attack in a Naples hospital after she collapsed as she left the stage at a benefit concert in Castel Volturno on Sunday.

“One of the greatest songstresses of our time Miriam Makeba has ceased to sing,” said South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma in a statement.

The singer “died performing what she did best — an ability to, communicate a positive message through the art of singing”.

Born in Johannesburg on March 4, 1932, Makeba became one of Africa’s best known singers and while Nelson Mandela was in prison took up the battle against apartheid through her music.

South Africa revoked her citizenship in 1960 and even refused to let her return for her mother’s funeral. Makeba spent more than three decades in exile, living in the United States, Guinea and Europe.

She saw her music outlawed in her homeland after she appeared in an anti-apartheid film. But she was an international success, winning a Grammy award for Best Folk Recording with US singer Harry Belafonte in 1965 for the album “An Evening With Belafonte/Makeba”.

“I kept my culture. I kept the music of my roots,” she said in her biography. “Through my music I became this voice and image of Africa, and the people, without even realising.”

But she also met controversy abroad. Her marriage to civil rights activist and Black Panthers leader Stokely Carmichael in 1968 caused controversy in the United States and some of her concerts were cancelled.

Makeba performed for half an hour Sunday at a concert near Naples on behalf of an Italian writer, Roberto Saviano, who has received death threats after writing an expose of the Italian mafia.

“She had been the last one to go on stage, after the performances of other singers,” said Carlo Hermann, an AFP photographer who covered the concert and witnessed fellow singers rush to her aid when she collapsed.

“There were calls for an encore and at that moment someone asked if there was a doctor in the house. Miriam Makeba had fainted and was lying on the floor.”

Makeba was the daughter of a Swazi mother and Xhosa father.

She captured international attention as a vocalist for a South African group, The Manhattan Brothers, when they toured the United States in 1959. Her citizenship was taken away the following year.

She was briefly married to trumpeter Hugh Masekela, another famous South African artist who also spent long years in exile under apartheid.

Makeba had her biggest hit in 1967 with “Pata Pata” — Xhosa for “Touch Touch”, describing a township dance — but unwittingly had signed away all royalties on the song.

She was often short of money and could not afford to buy a coffin when her only daughter, Bondi, died aged 36 in 1985. She buried her alone, barring a handful of journalists from covering the funeral.

According to her biography, she also battled with cervical cancer and a string of unhappy relationships. It said rumours of her alcoholism were unfounded.

While she was still in enforced exile, she performed with Paul Simon in the US singer’s 1987 Graceland concert in Zimbabwe, neighbouring South Africa.

She finally returned to her homeland in the 1990s after Nelson Mandela was released from prison as the apartheid system they had both fought for so long began to be dismantled.

But it took her six years to find someone in the South African recording industry to produce a record with her. She entitled it “Homeland”.

Obituary (Globe and Mail.com)

Miriam Makeba, 76

CELEAN JACOBSON

Associated Press

November 10, 2008 at 4:09 AM EST

JOHANNESBURG — Miriam Makeba, the South African singer who wooed the world with her sultry voice but was banned from her own country for 30 years under apartheid, died early Monday after a concert in Italy. She was 76.

The Pineta Grande Clinic, a private clinic near the southern city of Naples, said the singer died after being brought there. The ANSA news agency reported that Makeba apparently suffered a heart attack after performing for 30 minutes at a concert against organized crime.

The death of “Mama Afrika,” as she was known, plunged South Africa into shock and mourning.

“One of the greatest songstresses of our time has ceased to sing,” Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma said in a statement.

Makeba wrote in her 1987 memoirs that friends and relatives who first encouraged her to perform compared her voice to that of a nightingale. With her distinctive style combining jazz with folk with South African township rhythms, she was often called “The Empress of African Song.”

She first started singing in Sophiatown, a cosmopolitan neighbourhood of Johannesburg that was a cultural hot spot in the 1950s before its black residents were forcibly removed by the apartheid government.

She then teamed up with South African jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela — later her first husband — and her rise to international prominence started when she starred in the anti-apartheid documentary Come Back, Africa in 1959.

When she tried to fly home for her mother’s funeral the following year, she discovered her passport had been revoked. It was 30 years before she was allowed to return.

In 1963, Makeba appeared before the UN Special Committee on Apartheid to call for an international boycott of South Africa. The South African government responded by banning her records, including hits like Pata Pata, The Click Song (Qongqothwane in Xhosa), and Malaika. Makeba received the Grammy Award for Best Folk Recording in 1966 together with Harry Belafonte for An Evening With Belafonte/Makeba. The album dealt with the political plight of black South Africans under apartheid.

Thanks to her close relationship with Belafonte, she received star status in the United States and performed for president John F. Kennedy at his birthday party in 1962. But she fell briefly out of favour when she married black power activist Stokely Carmichael and moved to Guinea in the late 1960s.

After three decades abroad, Makeba was invited back to South Africa by anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela shortly after his release from prison in 1990 as white racist rule crumbled.

“It was like a revival,” she said about going home. “My music having been banned for so long, that people still felt the same way about me was too much for me. I just went home and I cried.”

She insisted that her songs were not deliberately political.

“I’m not a political singer,” she insisted in an interview with Britain’s Guardian newspaper earlier this year. “I don’t know what the word means. People think I consciously decided to tell the world what was happening in South Africa. No! I was singing about my life, and in South Africa we always sang about what was happening to us — especially the things that hurt us.”

Makeba announced her retirement three years ago, but despite a series of farewell concerts she never stopped performing. When she turned 75 last year, she said she would sing for as long as possible.

Graham Gilfillan, Makeba’s long-time business manager, said the family was holding a meeting in South Africa and would release a statement later Monday.

Arts and Culture Ministry spokesman Sandile Memela described Makeba as an international icon.

“It’s a monumental loss not only to South African society in general but for humanity,” he said.

Tributes poured in on morning radio talk shows, with many callers in tears as they recalled her humour and her unrelenting spirit.

“She had been part of my life for a long time. It is a great loss,” singer P.J. Powers told a local radio station. “She had a huge soul.”

(from Zar.co.za)

Miriam Makeba
4 March 1932 – ?

Miriam Makeba Miriam was born in Johannesburg. As a young girl of thirteen, she entered a talent show at a missionary school and walked off with the first prize. She was often invited to sing at weddings, and her popularity grew in leaps and bounds as more and more people became dazzled by her talent. In 1952 she was chosen to sing for The Manhattan Brothers and toured South Africa with them. As early as 1956, she wrote and released the song “Pata Pata”.

She received invitations to visit Europe and America, where she came to the attention of Harry Belafonte and Steve Allen and was capitulated to stardom. 1959 saw her becoming the first South African to win a Grammy award for the album ‘An Evening with Harry Belafonte & Miriam Makeba’.

Miriam became an exile in 1960 when South Africa banned her from returning to her birth country – she was deemed to be too dangerous and revolutionary – this was after she had appeared in an anti-apartheid documentary, entitled “Come Back Africa”, and this upset the then white apartheid government of South Africa. Miriam only returned to South Africa thirty years later.

In 1967, more than ten years after she wrote the song, “Pata Pata” was released in the United States and became a hit worldwide. It has since been re-recorded by numerous international artists. Miriam was a darling of the American public, but they turned against her when she married the radical black activist, Stokely Carmichael, in 1968. Once again, she was at the receiving end of a dissatisfied and disgruntled country. Although the United States never banned her, her US concerts and recording contracts were suddenly cancelled.

She moved back to Africa, this time to Guinea where she was welcomed with open arms. Miriam continued to record songs and toured intensively. She was well respected by the government of Guinea and was asked to address the United Nations General Assembly as a Guinean delegate. She twice addressed the General Assembly, speaking out against the evils of apartheid.

Although always regarding herself as a singer and not as a politician, Miriam’s fearless humanitarianism has earned her many International awards, including the 1986 Dag Hammerskjold Peace Prize and the UNESCO Grand Prix du Conseil International de la Musique. Makeba is also known for having inspired an enduring fashion in the 60’s when the slogan “black is beautiful” was launched:

“I see other black women imitate my style, which is no style at all, but just letting our hair be itself. They call it the Afro Look.”

Makeba Biography She was received by such world leaders as Hailé Selassie, Fidel Castro, John F. Kennedy and François Mitterrand. She has toured with singers such as Paul Simon, Nina Simone, Hugh Masekela and Dizzy Gillepsie. The ban on her records was lifted in South Africa in 1988 and she returned to her homeland in December 1990. Four years later she started a charity project to raise funds to protect women in South Africa. Her first concert in South Africa (1991) was a huge success and this was a prelude for a world-wide tour which included the USA and Europe.

She has released over thirty albums over the years, and her powerful and distinctive voice retains the clarity and range that enable it to be both forceful as a protest march and as poignant as an African lullaby.

Miriam is MamaAfrica, a lady with a special touch. She has weathered many storms in her life, including several car accidents, a plane crash and even cancer. She remains as active in her latter years as she did as a young girl with stars in her eyes.

Her exceptional personal and artistic profile is part of the history of this century, all adding to the dramatic elements of an extraordinary life, making Miriam Makeba a living legend.

Gallery:

Contact Miriam Makeba:
Agent: Cassandra Goins
Email: Goinscassandra@putumayo.com

Miriam Makeba
Cape Town Jazz Festival in 2006.
Background information
Birth name	Zensile Makeba Qgwashu Nguvama Yiketheli Nxgowa Bantana Balomzi Xa Ufnu Ubajabulisa Ubaphekeli Mbiza Yotshwala Sithi Xa Saku Qgiba Ukutja Sithathe Izitsha Sizi Khabe Singama Lawu Singama Qgwashu Singama Nqamla Nqgithi^[1]
Also known as	Mama Afrika
Born	March 4, 1932(1932-03-04)
Origin	Prospect Township near Johannesburg, South Africa
Died	November 10, 2008 (aged 76)
Genre(s)	Afrobeat
Occupation(s)	Singer
Years active	1954 — 2008
Label(s)	Manteca, RCA, Collectables, Suave Music, Reprise, Warner Bros., Polygram, Drg, Stern’s Africa, Kaz, Sonodisc
Website	Official Website

Biography

Miriam Zenzi Makeba was born in Johannesburg in 1932. Her mother was a Swazi sangoma and her father, who died when she was six, was a Xhosa. As a child, she sang at the Kilmerton Training Institute in Pretoria, which she attended for eight years.

Makeba’s full name is Zenzile Makeba Qgwashu Nguvama Yiketheli Nxgowa Bantana Balomzi Xa Ufun Ubajabulisa Ubaphekeli Mbiza Yotshwala Sithi Xa Saku Qgiba Ukutja Sithathe Izitsha Sizi Khabe Singama Lawu Singama Qgwashu Singama Nqamla Nqgithi. In keeping with tradition, her full name contains the first names of her male ancestors followed by a one- or two-word description of their character.^[1]

Makeba first toured with an amateur group. Her professional career began in the 1950s with the Manhattan Brothers, before she formed her own group, The Skylarks, singing a blend of jazz and traditional melodies of South Africa.

In 1959, she performed in the musical King Kong alongside Hugh Masekela, her future husband. Though she was a successful recording artist, she was only receiving a few dollars for each recording session and no provisional royalties, and was keen to go to the US. Her break came when she starred in the anti-Apartheid documentary Come Back, Africa in 1959. She went to the premier of the film at the Venice Film Festival.

Makeba then travelled to London where she met Harry Belafonte, who assisted her in gaining entry to and fame in the United States. She released many of her most famous hits there including Pata Pata, The Click Song (Qongqothwane in Xhosa), and Malaika. 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.

She discovered that her South African passport was revoked when she tried to return there in 1960 for her mother’s funeral. In 1963, after testifying against Apartheid before the United Nations, her South African citizenship and her right to return to the country were revoked. She has had nine passports, ^[2] and was granted honorary citizenship of ten countries.^[3]

Miriam Makeba and Dizzy Gillespie in concert (1991).

Her marriage to Trinidadian civil rights activist and SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael in 1968 caused controversy in the United States, and her record deals and tours were cancelled. As a result of this, the couple moved to Guinea, where they became close with President Ahmed Sékou Touré and his wife. Makeba separated from Carmichael in 1973, and continued to perform primarily in Africa, South America and Europe.

She was one of the African and Afro-American entertainers at the 1974 Rumble in the Jungle match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman held in Zaïre. Makeba also served as a Guinean delegate to the United Nations, for which she won the Dag Hammarskjöld Peace Prize in 1986.

After the death of her only daughter Bongi Makeba in 1985, she moved to Brussels. In 1987, she appeared in Paul Simon’s Graceland tour. Shortly thereafter she published her autobiography Makeba: My Story (ISBN 0-453-00561-6).

Nelson Mandela persuaded her to return to South Africa in 1990. In the fall of 1991, she made a guest appearance in an episode of The Cosby Show, entitled “Olivia Comes Out Of The Closet”. In 1992 she starred in the film Sarafina!, about the 1976 Soweto youth uprisings, as the title character’s mother, “Angelina.” She also took part in the 2002 documentary Amandla!: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony where she and others recalled the days of Apartheid.

In January 2000, her album, Homeland, produced by Cedric Samson and Michael Levinsohn^[4] was nominated for a Grammy Award in the “Best World Music” category^[5]. In 2001 she was awarded the Gold Otto Hahn Peace Medal by the United Nations Association of Germany (DGVN) in Berlin, “for outstanding services to peace and international understanding”. In 2002, she shared the Polar Music Prize with Sofia Gubaidulina. In 2004, Makeba was voted 38th in the Top 100 Great South Africans. Makeba started a worldwide farewell tour in 2005, holding concerts in all of those countries that she had visited during her working life. ^[3]

Her publicist notes that Makeba had suffered “severe arthritis” for some time.^[6]

She died in the early hours of the morning in Castel Volturno, near Caserta, Italy, on 10 November 2008, of a heart attack, shortly after taking part in a concert organized to support writer Roberto Saviano in his stand against the Camorra, a mafia-like organisation.^[7]^[8]^[9]