The Voice of (Which?) Africa: Miriam Makeba in America

Abstract

Throughout her time as a concert singer in 1960s America Miriam Makeba was promoted as the embodied voice of a sonic, imagined Africa. Where her white audiences were attracted to the complete ‘‘otherness’’ of her African blackness, her black American audiences saw themselves – or imagined versions of themselves – put on stage, and built solidarities between their own struggle and the struggle against apartheid. In this essay, I argue that the discourses that followed Makeba’s voice and body reflected the evolving attitudes of America towards Africa, and, through Africa, its contradictory relationship to its own African American citizens. Makeba played on these discourses to craft a political and musical identity in solidarity with black and diasporic causes. This identity, embodied in the persona of ‘‘Mama Africa,’’ allowed Makeba the flexibility to speak to and for her fellow (South) Africans with cultural authority. By joining the oft-opposed positions of ‘‘Africa’’ and ‘‘The World,’’ Makeba became what I’m calling an African Cosmopolitan.

Keywords:

• Miriam Makeba
• South Africa
• cosmopolitanism
• music
• performance

Notes

¹ Goldberg, “Belafonte Show More Entertaining Than Ever,” A12.

² Ebron, Performing Africa, 24.

³  Paul Simon: Graceland (The African Concert). Directed by Lindsay Michael-Hogg.

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ Simon recorded his Graceland album in Johannesburg in 1985, utilizing South African musicians and drawing on South African musical idioms. Detractors argued that Simon appropriated Africa's forms and, in his decision to record in South Africa, broke the International Cultural-Boycott. His defenders argue that his album is in the spirit of the boycott, and that the album brought attention to South African artists, such as Ladysmith Black Mambazo, who otherwise would have not received global attention. The controversy has been detailed by Veit Erlmann, Charles Hamm, and Meinjies (“Paul Simon's Graceland, South Africa, and the Mediation of Musical Meaning”), among many others.

⁶ Appadurai, Modernity at Large.

⁷ Thompson, The Soundscape of Modernity, 2–3.

⁸ Though my focus is the ways in which conceptions of Africa are projected or transformed through Makeba's voice and performances, the “Black Voice” has a long history within the scholarship this paper draws upon. The concept of the black voice troubles many assumptions within both music and black studies; over the years theorists have posed questions pertaining to the nature of this voice, its essential “blackness,” its politics, and its retention of African elements. Authenticity and essence are central to these arguments, with good reason: for centuries, black arts and experience were consistently devalued or erased by a naturalized western “norm.” The Black Arts Movement, especially as championed by Amiri Baraka (see: Black Music, 1968), is the most explicit articulation of this desire to reclaim an authentic blackness. Radano's 2003 Lying up a Nation provides an excellent overview of the main strands of thought in musicology around black music, and argues against any readings that totalize the black experience: “Neither pure lyric nor unadulterated racial sound, the voice of black music may best be likened to a “soundtext,” to a sonic palimpsest that accumulates tales on those already written. A multivocal, multitextual offering, black music communicates in the end many “musics,” which, in their variety, ironically give voice to a racial nation” (Radano 3). The advent of recording and audio technologies allowed the black voice, new methods of circulating within the “racial nation,” removed from the black performing body. Alexander Weheliye has argued that the technologically that mediated and scrambled the relationship between the black voice and its audiences lay the ground for a Sonic Afro-Modernity, both informing and separate from western conceptions of modernity (Weheliye, “I am I be”). As important as this dialogue has been and continues to be in scholarship on blackness, my analysis is less interested in whether Makeba's voice is “authentically” black/African, and more focused on the value her audiences invested in its “Africanness” or blackness. The embodied performances of her songs are therefore more interesting to read in terms of the intersections of her intention and of her audiences’ reception (as co-produced “soundtexts”) than they are in providing a template (or rejection) for African authenticity. The reality, as I shall argue, is far more complex.

⁹ Radano, Lying Up a Nation, 15.

¹⁰ Gelb, “Miriam Makeba and Leon Bibb Open Shows,” 24.

¹¹ Bracker, “Xhosa Songstress,” SM32.

¹² Makeba and Hall, Makeba: My Story.

¹³ Harford, “African Song Star Unique Entertainer,” C28.

¹⁴ Clar, “Folk Singer's Vocal Skills Astonishing,” G8.

¹⁵ Erlmann, “Africa Civilized, Africa Uncivilized,” 2.

¹⁶ Bernstein, “Miss Makeba Proves Music is Universal,” B3.

¹⁷ Erlmann, “Africa Civilized, Africa Uncivilized,” 1.

¹⁸ Shelton, “2800 hear concert by Miriam Makeba.”

¹⁹ Gelb, “Miriam Makeba and Leon Bibb Open Shows,” 24.

²⁰ Clar, “Folk Singer's Vocal Skills Astonishing,” G8.

²¹ Ibid.

²² Gelb, “Miriam Makeba and Leon Bibb Open Shows,” 24.

²³ Goldberg, “Belafonte Show More Entertaining Than Ever,” A12.

²⁴ Pagones, “Miriam Makeba to Appear Here,” G4.

²⁵ Makeba and Hall, Makeba: My Story.

²⁶ Ebron, Performing Africa, 35.

²⁷ Shelton, “2800 hear concert by Miriam Makeba.”

²⁸ Ginsburg, Howl, 1.

²⁹ Clar, “Folk Singer's Vocal Skills Astonishing,” G8.

³⁰ Harford, “African Song Star Unique Entertainer,” C28.

³¹ Shelton, “2800 hear concert by Miriam Makeba.”

³² Appadurai, Modernity at Large, 33.

³³ Marabi, a form of music that flourished in urban black working-class communities in the first half of the twentieth century, is itself a product of numerous musical traditions from both South Africa and abroad. Cyclical with a deceptively simple chord progression, marabi is the music of the informal beer halls (known as shebeens) and of an unprecedented social and musical mixing. Ansell (Soweto Blues, 2004) terms it one of the grandparents of South African jazz.

³⁴ Coplan, In Township Tonight, 197.

³⁵ The effects of these complex diasporic exchanges has perhaps been best theorized by Paul Gilroy in his influential 1993 book The Black Atlantic.

³⁶ McPherson, “One Day They’ll Kill that African Lion,” F5.

³⁷ Ibid.

³⁸ The history of appropriation and exploitation that surrounds Mbube demonstrates the ways in which value is (not) given to African artists and cultural production. Composed in the 1920s by Solomon Linda and first recorded in 1939 by Linda and his Johannesburg band The Evening Birds, Mbube was then covered and recorded by the American folk group The Weavers in 1952 as Wimoweh (a mispronunciation of Mbube), before being taken up by “do-wop” group The Tokens as The Lion Sleeps Tonight, to become one of the top recordings on the 1961 Billboard. The Lion Sleeps Tonight has been covered by bands as diverse as Ladysmith Black Mambazo and N*Sync. As copyright was not commonly offered to black bands recording with Gallo Records in South Africa at the time, Solomon Linda was paid a nominal fee and, later, died penniless. In 2004, Linda's estate won both copyright of the song and a hefty settlement from the Disney Corporation. However, the persistent denial of authorship to Linda (with the common excuse that African songs are “communal property”) demonstrates how African talent was naturalized and taken advantage of. These prevailing attitudes added to the public's delight in Makeba's repertoire, as—without author—these songs seemed to belong to primordial, originary past. For more on Mbube, see: Erlman, Music, Modernity, and the Global Imagination; Ansell, Soweto Blues; Coplan, In Township Tonight.

³⁹ See Gates, The Signifyin(g) Monkey.

⁴⁰ For more information, see documentary: Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony.

⁴¹ Roughly synonymous with “nigger” in America.

⁴² Makeba and Hall, Makeba: My Story, 98.

⁴³ Harford, “African Song Star Unique Entertainer,” C28.

⁴⁴ Makeba and Hall, Makeba: My Story, 113.

⁴⁵ Feather, “Miriam Makeba Clicks at LA Club,” 15.

⁴⁶ Belafonte and Makeba, “An Evening with Belafonte and Makeba.”

⁴⁷ Belefonte and Eldridge, “Remains of the Day-O,” 121.

⁴⁸ McGill, Constructing Black Selves.

⁴⁹ Belafonte, The Many Voices of Miriam Makeba, LP sleeve.

⁵⁰ Ibid.

⁵¹ Ibid.

⁵² Ibid.

⁵³ Makeba and Hall, Makeba: My Story, 135.

⁵⁴ The relationships between these black American artists and the US government were not without friction. Armstrong, especially, performed songs that critiqued the government (for example, in The Real Ambassador, he sardonically notes: “While I represent the government/the government don’t represent some policies I’m for”), and pressed then-president Eisenhower to integrate the army as a requirement for his participation in the program. For more on the politics of the CCF, see: Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows up the World and Saunders, The Cultural Cold War.

⁵⁵ Anderson, This is Our Music, 80.

⁵⁶ Ibid, 79.

⁵⁷ Masekela and Cheers, Still Grazing, 195.

⁵⁸ Klemsrud, “Her Hairdo started the ‘Afro’ Trend,” 38.

⁵⁹ Carmichael, Ready for Revolution, 253.

⁶⁰ Poinsette, “FESTAC '77.”

⁶¹ Masekela and Cheers, Still Grazing, 256.

⁶² Makeba and Mwamuka, Makeba: The Miriam Makeba Story, 236. She would later become an official Goodwill Ambassador for South Africa, appointed to the task by Thabo Mbeki in 1999.

⁶³ Ansell, Soweto Blues, 221.

⁶⁴ Makeba and Hall, Makeba: My Story, 1.

⁶⁵ Odhoji, “‘Restorying’ the Maternal Myth of Origin in Zami and Makeba: My Story.”

⁶⁶ Makeba and Hall, Makeba: My Story, 211.

⁶⁷ Ibid, 233.

⁶⁸ Mbembe, “The Cultural Politics of South Africa's Foreign Policy.”

⁶⁹ I do not mean to suggest that these groups possess qualities that make them “authentically African;” as Gunner and Gunner (Zulu Identities) and Erlmann (Nightsong) have argued, these performance and vocal styles are a result of complex histories of migration and cultural exchange. Rather, I refer to the value given to them by Western audiences, for whom they are the primary representations of (South) Africa.

⁷⁰ Makeba suffered a heart attack on-stage at a benefit for anti-mafia activist Robert Saviano in Castel Volturno, Italy on November 10, 2008, and could not be revived. Perhaps appropriately, she had just finished her final rendition of the Pata Pata.

⁷¹ Erlmann, “The Aesthetics of the Global Imagination.”

⁷² Kwaito, a form of popular music influenced by hip-hop, rap, reggae, and house genres, originated in the townships and quickly became the music of choice for representing the perspective of post-apartheid South African youth.

⁷³ McCloy, “Mama Africa Meets the Kwaito Generation,” 1.

⁷⁴ See Allen, “Kwaito Versus Cross(ed) Over.”

⁷⁵ The final lineup included: The Black Eyed Peas, John Legend, Alicia Keyes (America); Shakira, Juannes (Colombia); Angelique Kidjo (Benin); Amadou and Miriam, Tinariwen, Vieux Farka Toure (Mali); K’Naan (Somolia); Big Nuz, The BLK JKS, Freshly Ground, Lira, Vusi Mahlasela, Hugh Masekela, The Parlotones, and The Soweto Gospel Choir (South Africa).

⁷⁶ The music video for this song is also fascinatingly problematic and eclectic, and deserving of analysis in its own right. María Elena Cepeda, “Shakira” has convincingly argued for Shakira's as representating an “idealized transational citizen;” in many ways, Shakira's trajectory of intercultural mobility mirrors Makeba's for the New Media Age.