Propped up on my desk is the only vinyl record I own–a copy of Miriam Makeba’s first studio album, c. 1960, scavenged one night two years ago from a box of records set out on the sidewalk along Prospect Park. I don’t have a record player, so it only gets played when I take it visiting. But Makeba’s voice has been a constant accompaniment for almost a decade now–I first heard her back in Seattle, during my college days, and then I saw her in Amandla when Lee Hirsch and Sherry Simpson brought it out to screen at the EMP before anybody had picked it up for theatrical release. I gathered more of her music when I went to Cape Town in 2003, and later copied recordings from my South African roommate in Oxford. LPG and I were overjoyed when we found out she was supposed to perform in the Park this summer as part of her farewell world tour, and when she had to cancel because of ill health (we saw the wonderful Sibongile Khumalo perform in her stead), I thought, I hope this wasn’t the last chance to hear her sing.
But for New York, her home for many of her years in exile, it was. She died on Sunday night, shortly after performing at a concert in Italy organized in support of Roberto Saviano, a writer whose life has been threatened because of his courageous exposés of the Camorra. Her loss is sudden and too soon, but a part of me thinks it’s fitting she was singing against injustice right up until the hour of her death. When a friend was making an Election Day playlist last week, a few South African freedom songs came up; I put Makeba’s version of Vuyisile Mini’s “Naants indod’emnyama Verwoerd” onto mine as I was heading out to canvass. Click the link below to listen:
Naants IndodEmnyama – Miriam Makeba
There’s a memorial appraisal from the NYT here, but really, instead of reading you should just go listen to some of her music. Here’s Mayibuye:
and Into Yam:
