81th anniversary of Myriam Makeba (04-03-2013)

Zenzile Miriam Makeba (4 March 1932 – 9 November 2008), nicknamed Mama Africa, was a South African singer, actor, UN goodwill ambassador, and civil rights activist. Born in Johannesburg, Makeba was forced to find employment as a child after the death of her father. She had a brief and allegedly abusive first marriage at the age of 17, and gave birth to her only child in 1950, as well as surviving an episode of cancer. Her talent for singing had been remarked upon when she was a child, and she began singing professionally in the 1950s, with the Cuban Brothers, the Manhattan Brothers, and the all-woman group The Skylarks, performing a mixture of jazz, traditional African melodies, and popular music from the West. In 1959, Makeba had a brief role in the anti-Apartheid film Come Back, Africa, which brought her international attention, and led to her travelling to perform in Venice, London, and New York. In London, she met Harry Belafonte, who would become a mentor and colleague. She moved to New York City, where she became immediately popular, and recorded her first solo album in 1960. However, when she tried to return to South Africa for her mother's funeral in the same year, she found her passport had been cancelled by the government, preventing her from returning home. Her career in the US flourished, and she released several songs and albums, including "Pata Pata" (1967), her most popular recording. Along with Belafonte she received a Grammy award for her 1966 album An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba. Makeba became involved with the civil rights movement against racial segregation in the US, and testified before the United Nations, asking for economic sanctions against the apartheid government. She married Stokely Carmichael, a leader of the controversial Black Panther Party, in 1968: as a result, she lost support among white Americans, and faced hostility from the US government, leading her and Carmichael to move to Guinea. She continued to perform, mostly in African countries, including at several celebrations of independence, and began to write and perform more explicitly political music critical of the apartheid regime, such as Soweto Blues, written in 1977 about the Soweto Uprising by her former husband Hugh Masekela. After the collapse of apartheid in 1990 Makeba returned to South Africa, where she continued to record music, including a 1991 collaboration with Nina Simone and Dizzy Gillespie. She had a role in the 1992 film Sarafina!, and was named a UN goodwill ambassador in 1999, in addition to campaigning for several humanitarian causes. She continued to perform until her death from a heart attack during a concert in Italy in 2008. Makeba was among the first African musicians to received worldwide recognition, and is credited with bringing African music to a Western audience, and with popularising the genres of world music and Afropop. She also made popular several songs critical of apartheid, and became a symbol of opposition to this system, particularly after her right to return was revoked. Upon her death, former South African President Nelson Mandela said that "her music inspired a powerful sense of hope in all of us."