Читать книгу Blessed Peacemakers - Robin Jarrell - Страница 66

4 March 1932—10 November 2008

Mama Africa, Singer of Truth

So long as she stuck to singing African standards like “Pata Pata” and the “Click Song,” Miriam Makeba was a hit in America. Born into poverty in Johannesburg, South Africa, but eventually, despite the restrictions of apartheid, making an international name for herself as a singer, Makeba delighted audiences with the richness of her voice and her exotic African songs. Harry Belafonte took her under his wing (together they recorded a Grammy-winning album), President John Kennedy insisted on meeting her, and Marlon Brando was one of her admirers. Her only regret was that South Africa revoked her passport in 1959 in retaliation for her public criticism of her home country, her performances at Martin Luther King-led civil rights demonstrations, and especially her appearance in the anti-apartheid film Come Back, Africa.

Things changed for the worse almost overnight when Makeba married Black Panther Stokely Carmichael in 1968. Scheduled concerts were cancelled, radio stations refused to play her music, and recording studios refused to work with her because of her association with Carmichael. Dismayed and angry at the racism she encountered in the United States, Makeba soon moved with Carmichael to Guinea, where she lived for the next fifteen years (she and Carmichael divorced in 1973). She continued to sing around the world, but refused for years to perform in the United States even after public outrage over her marriage had died down. In addition to opposing South African apartheid, she became a vocal critic of racism around the world. Her enemies tried to play down her outspoken anti-racism by claiming that she was a disgruntled hater of whites or a political opportunist. But Makeba vigorously rejected the accusations. “People have accused me of being a racist,” she said, “but I am just a person for justice and humanity. People say I sing politics, but what I sing is not politics, it is the truth. I’m going to go on singing, telling the truth.”

During the final years of apartheid, Makeba kept up the pressure by publicly urging an economic boycott of South Africa. She was awarded the United Nation’s Dag Hammarskjöld Peace Prize for her energetic opposition to racism, and admirers of both her social activism and her music began calling her “Mama Africa.” When apartheid officially ended in 1990, she returned to the land of her birth after a thirty-year exile. Although popular in Europe and North America, especially after her musical collaboration in the 1980s with Paul Simon that resulted in the album Graceland, she was largely unknown by young South Africans. That the younger generation who benefited from her years of opposition to apartheid neither knew nor cared much about her music was an irony that she took in stride. To the end of her life, Mama Africa continued performing internationally, and actually died while giving a benefit concert in Italy.