Woman Crush Wednesday: Zezile Miriam Makeba

Woman Crush Wednesday: Zezile Miriam Makeba 

Born Zezile Miriam Makeba,and nicknamed Mama Africa, she was a South African singer and civil rights activist. At eighteen days old, her mother was arrested for selling umqombothi, an African homemade beer brewed from malt and cornmeal. Her mother was sentenced to a six-month prison term, so Miriam spent her first six months of life in jail.

As a child, she sang in the choir of the Kilnerton Training Institute in Pretoria, a primary school that she attended for eight years then, at the age of 18, she had only child, Bongi Makeba, whose father was her first husband James Kubay, she was soon diagnosed with breast cancer, and her husband left her shortly afterwards.

Her professional career kicked off in the 1950s when she was featured in the South African jazz group the Manhattan Brothers, and appeared for the first time on a poster. She left the Manhattan Brothers to record with her all-woman group, The Skylarks, singing a blend of jazz and traditional melodies of South Africa.

As early as 1956, she released the single "Pata Pata", which was played on all the radio stations and made her name known throughout South Africa. She remarried in 1959 to Sonny Pillay, a South African singer of Indian descent but that marriage did not last also.

Makeba  travelled to London where she met Harry Belafonte, who assisted her in gaining entry to the United States and achieving fame there.When she tried to return to South Africa in 1960 for her mother's funeral, she discovered that her South African passport had been cancelled. She signed with RCA Victor and released Miriam Makeba, her first U.S. studio album, in 1960.

In 1962, . In 1963, Makeba released her second studio album for RCA, The World of Miriam Makeba. An early example of world music, the album peaked at number eighty-six on the Billboard 200. Later that year, after she testified against apartheid before the United Nations, her South African citizenship and her right to return to the country were revoked. She was a woman without a country, but the world came to her aid, and Guinea, Belgium and Ghana issued her international passports, and she became, in effect, a citizen of the world.

In 1966, Makeba received the Grammy Award for Best Folk Recording together with Harry Belafonte for An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba. The album dealt with the political plight of black South Africans under apartheid, and it was one of the first American albums to present traditional Zulu, Sotho and Swahili songs in an authentic setting.

Time called her the "most exciting new singing talent to appear in many years," and Newsweek compared her voice to "the smoky tones and delicate phrasing of Ella Fitzgerald" and the "intimate warmth" of Frank Sinatra. Despite the success that made her a star in the U.S., she wore no makeup and refused to curl her hair for shows, thus establishing a style that would come to be known internationally as the "Afro look".

In 1967, more than ten years after she wrote the song, the single "Pata Pata" was released in the United States and became a worldwide hit.

On 16 October 1999, Miriam Makeba was nominated Goodwill Ambassador of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).In January 2000, her album, Homeland, produced by Cedric Samson and Michael Levinsohn for the New York City based record label Putumayo World Music, was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best World Music Album category. She worked closely with Graça Machel-Mandela, who at the time was the South African first lady, for children suffering from HIV/AIDS, child soldiers, and the physically handicapped. In 2001, she was awarded the Otto Hahn Peace Medal in Gold by the United Nations Association of Germany (DGVN) in Berlin, "for outstanding services to peace and international understanding". She shared the Polar Music Prize with Sofia Gubaidulina.

The prize is regarded as Sweden's foremost musical honour. They received their Prize from Carl XVI Gustaf King of Sweden during a nationally-televised ceremony at rwaldhallen, Stockholm, on 27 May 2002. She also took part in the 2002 documentary Amandla!: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony, where she and others recalled the struggles of black South Africans against the injustices of apartheid through the use of music. 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. On 9 November 2008, she became ill while taking part in a concert organised to support writer Roberto Saviano in his stand against the Camorra, a mafia-like organisation local to the Region of Campania. The concert was being held in Castel Volturno, near Caserta, Italy.

Makeba suffered a heart attack after singing her hit song "Pata Pata", and was taken to the Pineta Grande clinic, where doctors were unable to revive her. She and family members were based in Northriding, Gauteng, at the time of her death. From 25 to 27 September 2009, a tribute show to Makeba entitled Hommage à Miriam Makeba and curated by Grammy Award-winning Beninoise singer-songwriter and activist Angélique Kidjo for the Festival d'Ile de France, was held at the Cirque d'hiver in Paris. The same show but with the English title of Mama Africa: Celebrating Miriam Makeba was held at the Barbican in London on 21 November 2009.

Mama Africa, a documentary film about the life of Miriam Makeba, co-written and directed by Finnish film director Mika Kaurismäki, was released in 2011.

On 4 March 2013 Google honored her with a doodle on the homepage. As of May 2015, a musical about Miriam Makeba is being produced in South Africa by Niyi Coker. Entitled Zenzi!, the musical premiere started in 2016.

The Pretoria campus of the Lycée Jules Verne, École Miriam Makeba, is named after her.