Reflections on sunday: Fare thee well, Mama Africa!

The Grand Empress of the African song is no more, and so let me take a minute and express my heartfelt condolences to all out there who loved and cherished her great voice. Our consolation is that the South African Miriam Zensi Makeba, 76, passed away doing what she loved most: singing her heart out on stage, for the cause of universal justice. Mama Africa, as she was fondly known to all of us her fans, had a heart attack and died last Sunday evening, November 9, 2008, in the Italian city of Castel Nolturno. She was appearing at a solidarity concert for a journalist who covered the story of six immigrants from Ghana who were killed by mafia gunmen. It must have been 1958 when I first ‘met’ Miriam Makeba. This was in somebody’s house, on a radio that was the size of a bulky kitchen cabinet, then known as a vacuum-tube radio. Thanks to the fast-paced advancement of technology, by 1960 we could hear her voice a bit more clearly on a much less massive radio, called the transistor radio. The transistor radio was a miniature radio set that you could carry on your shoulder and comfortably listen to, even as you walked or rode your bicycle. Mind you, by miniature I mean lunch-box size and not the pocket size of today. Today radios have become much smaller, because you can pack millions of transistors on one integrated circuit or chip. In the 1960s, therefore, Makeba’s voice captured the hearts of many more people, not only on the continent of Africa but in the whole wide world (www!). Even today, you can easily catch me humming “Pata Pata!” Not that I have ever tried to find out what the English words are: “Chakukuta, Chakukatu/Ayifiyu Pata Pata!” I can easily guess that the second part is “I Feel Pata Pata”, but don’t ask me the first! I remember that, occasionally, we could visit homes that owned a contraption called the gramophone that played records. We thus got words more clearly than on transistor radios. On such occasions, it was practically impossible to drag us out of the homes, if they had records with Makeba’s songs like the tongue-clicking ‘Qonqothwane’ or the melodious ‘Malaika’. Even with that knowledge of me, however, you cannot imagine the extent of my excitement when I was told that I could behold my heavenly idol, with my own eyes! It was 1969 when our secondary school in Uganda announced that the celebrated Miriam Makeba would be in town and, with payment of a token fee, we could see her. The whole school kept vigil in the music hall to wait out her arrival. Then, finally, there she was on a low concrete stage, resplendent in a flowing, shiny African gown with head gear to match, Carmichael on her side. Now that I know, Stokely Carmichael, Makeba’s husband at the time, was the flamboyant civil rights leader of the Sixties in USA. Carmichael was known for coining the phrase “black power” and at one time headed the Black Panther Party. In 1978, he changed his names to Kwame Ture so as to honour the socialist presidents of Ghana and Guinea, Kwame Nkrumah and Ahmed Sekou Toure, respectively. Indeed, Miriam Makeba had a knack for a rare breed of men. She was launched into the world of music and was briefly matrimonially connected with compatriot Hugh Masekela. Hugh Ramopolo Masekela remains the single most legendary jazz trumpeter of all time in Africa. He is a jazz maestro comparable only to the best of USA like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. Makeba made her entry into the American world of music with the help of another great man, Harry Belafonte. Harold George Belafonte, Jr., in a word, is the “King of Calypso”. He was a musician, actor and a social activist of majestic proportions. And another not-so-great-man, Ingina (yours truly), will never forget that night, when he first set his eyes on the legendary Empress of African Song. Contact: ingina2@yahoo.co.uk