South African musician shared Afro pop with the world in defiance of apartheid

South African musician Johnny Clegg, who has died aged 66, formed one of the first rock bands with black and white musicians that performed together when apartheid was still the law of the land. Clegg was part of a community that brought Afro pop music to a global audience in the 1980s, along with Nigeria’s King Sunny Ade, Tabu Ley Rochereau from Congo as well as Western musicians such as Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel.

Through recordings with his first band, Juluka (the Zulu word for ‘‘sweat’’), which he and black musician Sipho Mchunu formed in the late 1970s, and its successor, Savuka (meaning

‘‘awakening’’ or

‘‘we have arisen’’), Clegg wedded Zulu rhythms and lyrics to Celtic folk and Western rock and pop music in a string of albums, the most successful of which helped him build a solid following in the United States. He made stateside tours in the 1980s and 90s.

In 2017, during a respite between cancer treatments, he mounted a Final Journey tour through Europe and the US.

‘‘While I’m strong and able to do stuff, I wanted to do a nice, big Final Journey tour.’’

It was a way of connecting with the cadre of fans he’d established over nearly four decades as well as a form of therapy, despite the toll his highly kinetic live show took on him. ‘‘But when I get onstage, something switches all those messages off,’’ he said.

One of Clegg’s breakthrough moments came in 1997 when his song Dela was featured in the comedy film George of the Jungle.

When Nelson Mandela was freed after 27 years in prison in 1990, he joined Clegg onstage during a performance of Clegg’s song Asimbonanga, written in protest at Mandela’s imprisonment by the ruling white government, which banned the song from radio airwaves upon its release in 1987.

Clegg subsequently performed at four Aids benefit concerts held in Mandela’s honour and was part of the all-star lineup at a 90th birthday celebration for Mandela in London’s Hyde Park. Yet he shied away from embracing the moniker of political activist.

‘‘For me,’’ he told The Sunday Times in Britain in 1989, ‘‘a political activist is someone who has committed himself to a particular ideology. I don’t belong to any political party. I stand for human rights.’’

Jonathan Paul Clegg was born in Bacup, Lancashire, England, but moved as a child to Africa with his mother, whose parents were Jewish immigrants from Poland.

They moved first to Rhodesia (which became Zimbabwe), and then South Africa when Clegg was 6. Like many white youths in the US and England who later became musicians, Clegg was captivated as a boy by the sounds he overheard whenever he was around black communities. He was initially

introduced to those communities by his mother, who was a cabaret and jazz singer, and his stepfather, a journalist.

Despite the nation’s institutional segregation, Clegg often sneaked into music and dance events, running afoul of the laws and occasionally landing in jail, the first time when he was 15.

‘‘To me, they were fun things,’’ he said in 1993, ‘‘things I wanted to be a part of: dancing with Africans at a migrant workers’ hostel, playing with them at night on the roofs where they live, and things I wasn’t allowed, because of the apartheid laws, to do.’’

Those experiences fed his companion career as a cultural anthropologist, earning him teaching posts at the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Natal.

An eloquent and educated speaker, Clegg would often combine the two careers during his concerts, enlightening audiences as to the different traditions from which the choreography and musical elements he incorporated originated.

He formed Savuka in 1985 after Juluka disbanded when Mchunu stopped performing to focus on his family. His key foils in the new band became percussionist and dancer Dudu Zulu and singers Mandisa Dlanga, who remained with him through to the end of his performing career, and Solly Letwaba.

The political and social revolution during which Mandela was transformed from political prisoner to South Africa’s president

was tumultuous. Even as there was much to celebrate, Clegg experienced ongoing tensions personally when Dudu Zulu was killed in 1992 while trying to mediate a dispute between feuding clans. Clegg disbanded Savuka shortly thereafter, later resuming touring and recording as a solo act.

‘‘It’s the pain of living,’’ Clegg said shortly after Zulu’s death. ‘‘You get the beautiful moments, you get the painful moments.’’

Among the moments he delved into on his 1989 album, Cruel, Crazy Beautiful World, was the birth of his son Jesse, to whom he acknowledged his finite time on Earth: ‘‘It’s a cruel, crazy, beautiful world/one day when you wake up I will have to say goodbye/ Goodbye/it’s your world so live in it!’’

Jesse Clegg in turn has become a pop star in South Africa, working to follow in his father’s footsteps to expand his audience beyond his native land.

Clegg took a philosophical view influenced by his associations with indigenous people as he battled cancer, and continued to look to his role as an artist to guide him. ‘‘It’s just a matter of human beings making meaning,’’ he said in 2017. ‘‘That’s what makes great artists, what makes great painters, great choreographers – that in the time that you are given, you make connections, and those connections are manufactured. They’re not in the real world; they are in your imagination. And if you have a strong imagination, you can get over anything.’’

Clegg is survived by his wife of 31 years, Jenny, and sons Jesse and Jaron. – LA Times