[Vision2020] Music's 'Mama Africa' Miriam Makeba Dies

[Tom Hansen]

I remember, as a child, going to the Greek Theatre with my mom and dad to 
watch Miriam Makeba perform with Harry Belafonte.  Her voice, personality, 
and attitude will be greatly missed.

--------------------------------------------------------

>From today's (November 11, 2008) Spokesman Review) -

-----------

Music's 'Mama Africa' Miriam Makeba dies

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – She died just how she wanted to: singing on 
stage for a good cause. And her recorded songs wafted out of taxis and 
radios, as fellow Africans struggled with their grief at her passing.

Miriam Makeba, the "Mama Africa" whose sultry voice gave South Africans 
hope when the country was gripped by apartheid, died Monday of a heart 
attack after collapsing on stage in Italy. She was 76.

In her dazzling career, Makeba performed with musical legends from around 
the world – jazz maestros Nina Simone and Dizzy Gillespie, Harry 
Belafonte, Paul Simon – and sang for world leaders such as John F. Kennedy 
and Nelson Mandela.

Her distinctive style, which combined jazz, folk and South African 
township rhythms, managed to get her banned from South Africa for more 
than 30 years.

"Her haunting melodies gave voice to the pain of exile and dislocation 
which she felt for 31 long years. At the same time, her music inspired a 
powerful sense of hope in all of us," Mandela said in a statement.

He said it was "fitting" that her last moments were spent on stage.

Makeba collapsed after singing one of her most famous hits, "Pata Pata," 
her family said. Her grandson, Nelson Lumumba Lee, was with her as well as 
her longtime friend, Italian promoter Roberto Meglioli.
 
"Whilst this great lady was alive she would say: 'I will sing until the 
last day of my life,' " the family statement said.

Makeba died at the Pineta Grande clinic in Castel Volturno, near the 
southern city of Naples, after singing at a concert in solidarity with six 
immigrants from Ghana who were shot to death in September. Investigators 
have blamed the attack on organized crime.

The death of "Mama Africa" sent shock waves through South Africa, where 
callers flooded local radio stations with their recollections of her. In 
Guinea, where Makeba lived most of her decades in exile, radio and 
television stations played mournful music and tributes to their adopted 
icon.

The first African to win a Grammy award, Makeba started singing in 
Sophiatown, a cosmopolitan neighborhood of Johannesburg that was a 
cultural hotspot in the 1950s before its black residents were forcibly 
removed by the apartheid government.

In 1963, Makeba appeared before the U.N. Special Committee on Apartheid to 
call for an international boycott of South Africa. The white-led South 
African government responded by banning her records. 

After three decades abroad, Makeba was invited back to South Africa by 
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."

--------------------------------------------------------

"The Click Song"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHxkiXALQjU

"When I've Passed On"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs_CxmMMpW4

"Africa is Where My Heart Lies"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXIj_0AxUaA

"Soweto Blues"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTj4qjC4akM

Rest well, Miriam.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

“I look at an ant and I see myself: a native South African, endowed by 
nature with a strength much greater than my size so I might cope with the 
weight of a racism that crushes my spirit.”

- Miriam Makeba




---------------------------------------------
This message was sent by First Step Internet.
           http://www.fsr.com/