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The Passing of
South African Folksinger Miriam Makeba
Excerpts Compiled by Rudolph Lewis
Born in Johannesburg in 1932 to a
Xhosa father and Swazi mother, Makeba—often called “Mama
Afrika” and “the Empress of African Song”—left South
Africa in 1959. When she tried to return for the funeral
of her mother the following year, her passport was taken
away and she was banned from the country. She addressed
the UN in 1976 to denounce apartheid, after which her
songs were banned in South Africa.
The singer lived in exile for over
thirty years in the United States, France, West Africa
and Belgium. She went back to South Africa in 1990, when
the then President, FW de Klerk, began to introduce
reforms which eventually ended in the dismantling of
apartheid and the release from prison and subsequent
election as President of Nelson Mandela.
Makeba sang with Harry Belafonte in
the 1960s and with Paul Simon in the 1980s. She became
the first black African woman to receive a Grammy award,
sharing it with Belafonte, and her greatest hit song was
“Pata Pata” (Xhosa for 'touch, touch'). She once said:
“Through my music I became this voice and image of
Africa and the people without even realising it.”—TimesOnline
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Although Ms. Makeba
had been weakened by osteoarthritis, her death stunned
many in
South Africa, where she stood as an enduring emblem
of the travails of black people under the apartheid
system of racial segregation that ended with the release
from prison of
Nelson Mandela in 1990 and the country’s first fully
democratic elections in 1994.
In a statement on
Monday, Mr. Mandela said the death “of our beloved
Miriam has saddened us and our nation.”
He continued: “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.”
“She was South
Africa’s first lady of song and so richly deserved the
title of Mama Afrika. She was a mother to our struggle
and to the young nation of ours,” Mr. Mandela’s was one
of many tributes from South African leaders.
“One of the
greatest songstresses of our time has ceased to sing,”
Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said in a
statement. “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 and
colonialism through the art of song.”—NYTtimes
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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.
She then teamed up
with South African jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela—later
her first husband—and her rise to international
prominence started in 1959 when she starred in the
anti-apartheid documentary "Come Back, Africa." When she
tried to fly home for her mother's funeral the following
year, she discovered her passport had been revoked.
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, 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 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 Kennedy at
his birthday party in 1962. But she fell briefly out of
favor when she married black power activist Stokely
Carmichael—later known as Kwame Ture—and moved to
Guinea in the late 1960s.
Besides working
with Simone and Gillespie, she also appeared with Paul
Simon at his "Graceland" concert in Zimbabwe in 1987.
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.—HuffingtonPost
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Her marriage to
Trinidadian civil rights activist and Student
Non-violent Coordinating Committee 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.
Return to South
Africa
Nelson Mandela
persuaded her to return to South Africa in 1990. In
November 1991, she made a guest appearance in an episode
of The Cosby Show, in the episode "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 was nominated for a Grammy Award
in the "Best World Music" category[6].
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.—Wikipedia
posted 15 November 2008
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Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered
the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It
By H. W. Brands
In Greenback Planet, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands charts the dollar's astonishing rise to become the world's principal currency. Telling the story with the verve of a novelist, he recounts key episodes in U.S. monetary history, from the Civil War debate over fiat money (greenbacks) to the recent worldwide financial crisis. Brands explores the dollar's changing relations to gold and silver and to other currencies and cogently explains how America's economic might made the dollar the fundamental standard of value in world finance. He vividly describes the 1869 Black Friday attempt to corner the gold market, banker J. P. Morgan's bailout of the U.S. treasury, the creation of the Federal Reserve, and President Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the bank panic of 1933. Brands shows how lessons learned (and not learned) in the Great Depression have influenced subsequent U.S. monetary policy, and how the dollar's dominance helped transform economies in countries ranging from Germany and Japan after World War II to Russia and China today. He concludes with a sobering dissection of the 2008 world financial debacle, which exposed the power--and the enormous risks--of the dollar's worldwide reign. The Economy |
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Haiti
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