MIRIAM MAKEBA CONSPIRACY THEORY…
Nov 10th, 2008 by Sean Baite
It’s a pity to push Conor’s Subterraneans post so soon off the top of the pile - remember them as another fine late 80s Dub band that never got their dues. I particularly remember a fairly amazing bass-playing singer (do I recollect right ?) don’t think I’ve heard anyone Irish play the bass like it since. Maybe they should’ve just steered clear of Mother Records…
Which brings me to Mother Africa. News filters through to my morbid monday-morning brain of the passing away of Miriam Makeba at the age of 76 BBC Report
Here she was over 20 years ago, onstage in Harare with Paul Simon :
She died yesterday of a heart failure after a concert near Caserta in Southern Italy, but, minuto ragazzi, what’s this :
The concert was on behalf of Roberto Saviano, the author of an expose of the Camorra mafia whose life has subsequently been threatened.
Saviano being the author of the book adopted to film by director Matteo GARRONE Gomorra Trailer
After ten years in France, I’ll not concede I’ve caught the latin tendency to see hidden sinister hands behind every minute event, but here goes… Only a couple of days ago, that working men’s club comic the Italians have for a president came out with another quote of Manuel Stimulacion proportions regarding the newly elected OBAMA - something to do with his suntan… Then, as if by coincidence, one of the major cultural icons of ’suntanned’ people, as the ever delicate ‘Silv’ put it, passes away in Italy the very week of his comment.
When are Interpol going to have a good look into this purported ‘cardiac’ death ? Or Berlusconi’s links to Neapolitan refuse contractors ? I’ve a suspicion Northern Loyalist fringe groups may be involved too - they still owe the Boers for those Shorts missile parts they never delivered… And Naples don’t like Rome Rule neither…
Ah well, enough of the levity. Miriam Makeba got a good enough innings - 76 years - wouldn’t expect to last that long myself… Her career stretches back to the 60s when she became probably the first black African artist to have a commercial success in the US with ‘Pata, Pata’ - somewhat Afrika-Lite but a milestone nonetheless. You will certainly come across a version in ‘related’ through the above YouTube link. Seeing the Paul Simon clip reminds me of that Graceland album - certainly among some of the best crafted songs of the 80s - but who now remembers all that controversy about using South African artists during the boycott ? The case of Makeba (exiled in the US for decades and up until 1992) shows that Simon hadn’t exactly picked arselickers of the apartheid regime for the project.
Seeing them on stage in Zimbabwe in 1987 with a smattering of white faces in the front rows of the audience (SA dissidents or locals ?) leads me to reflect on the way the mess in Africa just seems to seep under and over the borders but never ever goes away.
Elbow away Sean! what a wonderful voice.
The Click Song by Miriam Makeba is one of South Africa’s great cultural exports. R.I.P.
Actually not so far-fetched. The concert was in Castel Volturno, near Naples, chosen because the Comorra had murdered some Ghanaians there. The organisers were threatened, and much fewer people showed up than expected.
The other conspiracy theory is that she’s on this blog because her real name was Miriam McCabe.
No. Fucking. Way. Seriously?
True enough, Gar, I think the Click Song comes up fairly prominently in the You tube ‘related’ links.
Thanks for the further detail on the Italian benefit gig, Bartholemew - hadn’t done enough research to see there was a direct African connection. Murky bloody waters down there, definitely.
And Conor, was yer Great Grandad not in the Dublin Fusiliers down there in the Boer war ?? That’d explain why she was such a fine-looking slip of a cailín in the 60s…. :->
Watch out for that bloody Neapolitan ice cream from henceforth…
Getting away from the sad passing of Miriam Makeba briefly I’ll add a few other great products of South African culture: a) Outspan oranges, which I dared not buy during the apartheid boycott years, b) Cape grapes, ditto, c) Nederburg wine, ditto, d) the Springbok rugger team, e) boerworst (a strong-flavoured beef sausage they roast on a charcoal grill at a breivleis barbecue) which I liked eating during the boycott years (because imitations are produced in neighbouring countries in southern Africa), and finally ‘biltong’, dehydrated smoked slices of beef vacuum packed which you can chew slowly on when trekking through the African bush, also produced outside South Africa. They’ve also exported a favourite rugby song that begins as a chant: “I zigga zumba zumba zumba I zigga zumba zumba zay. I zigga zumba zumba zumba I zigga zumba zumba zay.
Hold ‘em down, you Zulu warriors. Hold ‘em down, you Zulu Chief, Chief, Chief, Chief…..” This is also chanted and sung at scouting campfires in the English-speaking world in the summer.