When Miriam Makeba left her South African homeland 31 years ago to sing for four weeks in America, she couldn`t have known how radically her life would change almost overnight.
”While I was here (in America), my mother died, and I tried to go home,” she recalls. ”But I was rudely awakened to the fact that I was banned.”
Makeba found herself a woman without a country, unable to return home, with her records banned in South Africa because she dared to chronicle the struggle of the black South African in her music, decades before the government would acknowledge that reality.
”It was so painful,” she recalls. ”I left home legally. I did not
`jump fence,` I left on South African Airways with a passport. But they wouldn`t let me bury my mother.”
That wound has been a slow one to heal, but if the South African authorities thought they would curtail the effectiveness of ”Mama Africa,”
as her countrymen call her, their plan backfired.
In exile, more than ever before, Makeba became a walking symbol of the oppressed black South African. Unlike the message of Nelson Mandela, another powerful symbol of black oppression whose voice was silenced in prison for more than a quarter century, Makeba`s message could be heard loud and clear with every song she sang.
In what may be her last Chicago appearance for some time as she prepares to return home, Makeba is bringing that message to Ravinia Wednesday night with her old friend Dizzy Gillespie.
”At one point, we were neighbors for a time, but we have never worked together,” she says. ”He wanted us to tour together, and just before that, we asked him if he could play on my record, which he did. I`m very proud to be working with him because to me, he`s a monument. He loves South African music and plays it beautifully.”
Gillespie and Makeba will play separate sets with their own bands, but Gillespie will open and close the show with Makeba.
Last year, she was allowed to visit home, wondering if the banning of her music and the passage of time would make her irrelevant to young South Africa. ”I went in June 1990,” she says, ”and they gave me six days. I went to greet the youth who were commemorating the Soweto uprising, which was June 16th. When I was presented, the whole stadium just stood up; kids who were not even born when I left home all calling out `Mama Africa.` And yet, my music was banned.”
It turned out that Makeba`s music could be heard from radio broadcasts in neighboring countries. ”Then there was the big Mandela concert in London, and a lot of people from home went there, and brought back tapes to play in their homes,” she says. There were also African appearances in other countries, including an appearance with Paul Simon in Zimbabwe that attracted many South Africans.
”I was just so happy to see that people missed me as much as I missed them,” Makeba says. ”When I would walk into a supermarket, the people would stop working and call for a photographer because every worker had to take a picture. I had to stop in the street for the kids, everybody. So it was a beautiful feeling. And now, Mandela has made a call that I should come back home, so I`m going home.”
For good? ”Yes, for good. I`ve been crying all these years, `I want to go home.` Now that I can go, I must go. Mentally, I`ve never really left home. I left home physically, but not mentally. Whether apartheid is dead or not, I want to go home. And I know it isn`t dead. Not yet.”
Will Makeba be improvising with Gillespie at Ravinia? ”No, no,” she says. ”I sometimes wonder what I`m doing playing so many jazz festivals, but people will say, `Well, you`re the mother of jazz, because it came from there.` So I guess it`s justified. I don`t know why people put music in cages. I do jazz festivals, concert halls, folk festivals. . . . If I like a song, I sing it.”
Makeba`s current album, ”Eyes on Tomorrow,” speaks to the vision she has for her homeland.
”The song `Vukani` is by Hugh Masekela,” she says, ”and is a plea to our people to stop killing each other and get together and work toward a better South Africa for tomorrow. `Thina Sizonqoba` is a plea to the children: Put your stones and weapons down, go back to school and pick up your books.” For Makeba, the healing appears to be well on its way. ”When I arrived home last year,” she says, ”I went straight to my brother`s house, put my bags down, and continued straight to my mother`s grave. I didn`t want anything to happen to me before I knelt down beside that lady`s grave and said, `I am sorry I wasn`t here, but now I am here.` That was the beginning.”
