Miriam Makeba - Miriam Makeba

Released - May 1960

Genre - World

Producer - Bob Bollard

Selected Personnel - Miriam Makeba (Vocals); Perry Lopez (Guitar); Milt Okun (Conductor); Charles Colman (Vocals)

Standout Track - The Click Song

A lot of the things I'm posting at the moment are being posted very much in the contrite spirit of "I really should have been into this much earlier," considering I'm currently filling in gaps in the years I've already covered, things I've listened to in the months since I last posted here regularly back in January. Much of that stuff is music I feel really should have been on regular rotation in my listening habits long before this year, and nowhere is that more true than with Miriam Makeba. I've generally grown up among traditional African music, specifically South African, for many years. My mum ran local community choirs in Salisbury for many years, and a large amount of the repertoire for those choirs tended to be drawn from traditional South African spirituals, so such music was played fairly regularly, and around 2005 my mum's interest in those musical traditions led to her organising the African premiere of Karl Jenkins' The Armed Man: A Mass For Peace (which we'll get onto some other day) in Cape Town, an event which also saw a return visit for the Fezeka choir from the township of Gugulethu, who came to stay with us and perform in and around Salisbury for a few weeks. On top of all that, my best friend Frith, who I've mentioned elsewhere on this blog, is South African so the music and culture of the country has long permeated my awareness. But for some reason the only way that general interest and awareness ever pervaded into my active listening habits was through the music of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the South African choral collective who would achieve worldwide success in the 80s thanks in part to being pioneered by Paul Simon.

But perhaps the first South African artist to achieve mainstream success worldwide was Miriam Makeba, who started singing in Johannesburg with vocal groups the Manhattan Brothers and the Skylarks, who would sing traditional South African songs as well as more contemporary jazz numbers. Her early work saw her achieve success throughout South Africa, but it was her brief appearance in an anti-apartheid documentary that was screened worldwide that saw her introduced to a wider audience. In the wake of this success she visited London and, with help from Harry Belafonte who she met while there, later the U.S., and only learned in 1960 on trying to return to Johannesburg for her mother's funeral that the South African government had revoked her passport in response to her anti-apartheid activism. As such, Makeba was from then on an exile living in the U.S., and this sense of exile is strongly in play on this, her first record for a U.S. label.

It might be difficult to discern much of a sense of yearning for home on this album considering how generally playful and light-hearted it all comes across - by and large it consists of celebratory, joyful songs rather than aching laments for a lost homeland, but that's very telling in itself - it's very much in the tradition of South African music to be joyful and celebratory, with music often playing a binding and healing role within a community, and it's notable that the only song that vaguely flirts with maudlin introspection, the slightly sluggish "Where Does It Lead," is one of the western-influenced songs rather than one of the African ones. It also says a lot that, save for a couple of more western-style songs ("The Naughty Little Flea," "House Of The Rising Sun,") Makeba felt no need to try and diminish the prominence and importance of Africa in her music. At this time, America was barely aware of African music or of music from any other more diverse parts of the world than just America, the U.K. and Europe, but Makeba felt no compulsion to try and fit in with what her new audience would find familiar. Thus we have traditional Indonesian lullabies in the form of the soothing, lilting "Suliram," and a whole host of other songs sung in South African dialects. Makeba had no interest in trying to give the American market something it would immediately recognise, instead forcing them to just immerse themselves in the uplifting power of the music itself, regardless of whether they had heard anything like it before. There's even a brief piss-take of western audiences on Makeba's spoken introduction to "The Click Song," another celebratory song used to mark weddings in Johannesburg, in which she explains that it has to be given its title as the English cannot pronounce the click sounds used as consonants in many South African languages, and are used as their own percussive part in the song.

And the joy of this album is a really tangible thing. Makeba's voice is really given to warmth and celebration, so the soaring melodies of "Saduva" or the playful mischief of "Mbube" (a traditional African piece later reworked as "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" to make it more palatable to western ears), really take off and instil a great delight in the listener. Of course, while many of the songs carry with them a sense of humour and playfulness, the two which communicate that most clearly to me are two of the English numbers, "The Naughty Little Flea," in which the backing singers swoop from high to low registers in imitation of the flea's scratching, and "One More Dance," in which guest vocalist Charles Colman makes the odd choice to struggle to restrain himself from hysterical laughter throughout as Makeba acts out the part of a woman at a party who refuses to go home and tend to her terminally ill husband until she hears he has actually died, at which point she rushes off to hear his will. It's a fairly tired shaggy dog story of a song, but Makeba's sweet, innocent delivery and Colman's (probably forced) hilarity at the impending punchline make it a really silly and sweet thing to listen to.

Accompaniment is kept simple throughout, largely limited to Perry Lopez's guitar and the occasional sprightly bass part as on "Mbube," with considerable space given to the backing vocalists the Belafonte Folk Singers, whose frequent call-and-response interactions with Makeba and complex harmonies again reinforce the sense that we're listening to a traditional African record rather than an African artist trying to skew things to fit western sensibilities, where backing vocalists are rarely as integral or as interactive as in African music.

Miriam Makeba established her as one of the major African artists to be introduced to the rest of the world, and she used its success as a platform to continue protesting against the apartheid system back in South Africa. In response, the government revoked her citizenship and her right to her country, but in response to the huge impact she had had on the world stage through both her music and her activism, she was given honorary passports by many other countries including Ghana and Belgium. Over the subsequent years she would work with the likes of Belafonte, Paul Simon, and South African musician Hugh Masekela, who she briefly married in the 60s, and would continue to be an icon of African music. Finally, after the apartheid system crumbled, she would be able to return home to South Africa in 1990 for the first time in thirty years.

Track Listing:

1. The Retreat Song (Miriam Makeba)

2. Suliram (Traditional)

3. The Click Song (Makeba; Khoza; Majola; Mdedle & Mogosti)

4. Umhome (Miriam Makeba)

5. Olilili (Silinga)

6. Lakutshn, Ilanga (Dvashe & Glazer)

7. Mbube (Linda)

8. The Naughty Flea (Thomas)

9. Where Does It Lead (Davis)

10. Nomeva (Miriam Makeba)

11. House Of The Rising Sun (Traditional, arranged by Perry Lopez)

12. Saduva (Miriam Makeba)

13. One More Dance (Carter)

14. Iya Guduza (Miriam Makeba)