Miriam Makeba

Befittingly, Miriam Zenzi Makeba—Grammy Award-winning songstress from South Africa, the “Empress of African Song,” Mama Afrika herself—died as she lived: on stage, and for a noble cause. After concluding a performance at a concert near Caserta, Italy—interestingly enough, supporting a writer opposing the oldest crime organization in the country—she collapsed and succumbed to a heart attack. She was 76 years of age.

Makeba needs the rest, for her entire life was characterized by struggle—by being in a three-decade exile from her homeland South Africa for speaking out against apartheid; by watching her record deals and tours cancelled as the consequence for marrying radical civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael; by being in prison with her herbalist mother…while still in utero. And Makeba singing became her conduit of struggle. Blessed with a calming, assuring tone that exuded confidence and doggedness, she found her calling in singing, right from the moment she was a child at a training institute in Pretoria, South Africa. From there, she would only soar higher: performing to exclusively black audiences with The Manhattan Brothers in the 1950s; formed her own group, The Sylarks; starred in the anti-apartheid Come Back, Africain 1959; and, of course, her collaborations with Harry Belafonte in the United States, forever linking the struggles of people of African descent everywhere.

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