New Makeba box set a definitive collector’s item
Unearthed songs, video clips and rare recordings provide full picture
When Miriam Makeba saw her best friends Dolly Rathebe and Nina Simone die with virtually no access to the intellectual property they had created in their lives, she decided to toughen up her business approach.
“Makeba was a businesswoman who saw far into the future,” says her business affairs manager, Graeme Gilfillan.
She launched the Makeba Music Corporation in 1961 in New York and integrated music and business by starting a nightclub in Guinea in the 1970s. And in 2002 Makeba formed the intellectual property trust ZM Makeba Trust and its exclusive licensee Siyandisa Music, with the instructions “to recover all her work”.
Siyandisa entered into an agreement with Johnnic (Gallo’s parent company) to settle hostilities that started in the 1960s and retrieved her existing albums from the public domain and the record labels.
Now, nearly 10 years after her death, her office in Parktown has released her full discography in a box set with several albums and compilations of new music. The collection shows the evolution of Makeba’s voice over her professional career.
Of the vast repertoire she performed, Makeba composed 42 songs and sang 70% of South African compositions from 16 South African composers.
Some of her compositions put other local performers on the global map, including the Click Song by the Manhattan Brothers, Into Yam by Dorothy Masuka, Lakutshon’iLanga by Mackay Davashe, Mbube by Solomon Linda and Ntjilo Ntjilo by Alan Silinga.
The earliest recordings in the box set are from the Sunbeams, Makeba’s pre-Skylarks vocal quartet. This music was thought to have been lost in a fire at EMI archives, but it was rediscovered in Gideon Nxumalo’s personal LP (long play) collection. The album, Missing 50s, is highlighted by the masterful flute fills played by Spokes Mashiyane.
Other rare compilations in the set include Tracks Less Travelled and Makeba on 78rpms compiled by Durbanborn and US-based artist Siemon Allen. He started collecting South African music after finding an original copy of the award-winning 1965 Evening with Harry Belafonte LP in a second-hand record store.
The album features compositions from Jonas Gwangwa and the upbeat and joyful warning titled Beware, Verwoerd (Ndodemnyama). These massproduced LP records were very effective in spreading the antiapartheid message.
“After listening to Makeba’s records I was blown away,” says Allen. “Going overseas and recording in all these different languages around the world, she was a world artist. She is the beginning of world music.”
The 1960s in New York was the peak of Makeba’s career. She recorded 10 studio albums in the decade and performed worldwide with a professional performance trio consisting of bass player William Salter, Brazilian accordion and acoustic guitar player Savuki and Caribbean percussionist Leopoldo Fleming Jnr. Salter was a prolific composer and had an expansive effect on Makeba’s repertoire.
The video of her 1966 performance at baroque restaurant Berns Salonger in Stockholm is the highlight of the set. The concert was broadcast on Swedish TV and recorded by 18-year-old Ake Holm off his set at home.
It is a stunning show. Makeba is wearing a leopard-skin dress fashioned from a skin given to her by Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya 1962. Her stage appearance is gentle and respectful.
The video footage also includes a stylish Swedish television interview where Makeba, dressed in a Jackie Kennedystyle suit and African headgear, explained her approach to protest and performance.
“I usually find that when people pay to come and hear an entertainer, they don’t want to be reminded of the ugly things in this world,” she said.
To express her opinions about apartheid, Makeba sang on many occasions Jeremy Taylor’s A Piece of Ground, taken from the musical Wait a Minim!. She said at the 1966 performance: “In the case of SA, one has to be specific. Jeremy wrote this song because perhaps he loves the truth.”
Later she co-composed Mayibuye with Christopher Singxaka. “The song comes from the townships and locations near the cities of SA and is a plea for all southern Africans to come together and share their problems and try to solve them in the manner of great fathers,” the legendary artist said.
Makeba took South African music mainstream. She had an indelible influence on the careers of Caiphus Semenya, Letta Mbulu and Hugh Masekela, whose compositions she performed throughout her career, especially on her 1970s albums.
The link between Makeba’s American career and her influence on Africa is boosted by the rediscovery of her 1965 live recording at the Organisation of African Unity conference in Ghana. The recording includes an interview on the radio programme Time for Show Business. The interviewer claimed that Makeba’s clicks were “gimmicks”. Makeba explained very sweetly that the clicks were actually her language.
Makeba was estranged from the US when she moved to Guinea with her then husband Stokely Carmichael as a guest of President Sekou Toure. It was a very rich musical period. The sounds of the kora and balafon instruments of West Africa and the searing strings of North Africa complemented the majestic and sustained tones of her unique voice.
Recordings from that era are few and far between, particularly after a fire destroyed the archives at the Guinea state broadcaster. The Guinea years bootleg album she took control of is included in the box set with a compilation of live recordings.
After returning to SA from exile, Makeba recorded three albums, performing throughout the last two decades of her career in a 20-piece band that included her closest family members — her grandchildren Lumumba and Zenzi Lee and great grandchild Lindelani Lee.
They make strong contributions on Makeba’s last three albums and her world tours, including her farewell tour across the globe in 2006 and her final recording, the touching Live in Iceland DVD.
‘WHEN PEOPLE PAY TO COME AND HEAR AN ENTERTAINER, THEY DON’T WANT TO BE REMINDED OF THE UGLY THINGS’