South African singing legend and anti-apartheid activist Miriam "Mamma Africa" Makeba has died at age 76. She had been performing at a concert in Italy.
She had just taken part in a concert near the southern town of Caserta, the Ansa news agency reported.
The concert was on behalf of Roberto Saviano, the author of an expose of the Camorra mafia whose life has subsequently been threatened.
Here's a YouTube video of her performing Pata Pata, one of her big international hits:
In the documentary Soul Power, which I saw at TIFF (posting here), she performed the Click Song. You can see a version of that tune on this YouTube clip.
She had this to say in both Soul Power and on the above clip:
"Everywhere we go, people ask me, 'how do you make that noise?' It it used to offend me because it isn't a noise; it's my language. But I seem to understand that they don't understand that (click) is my language, and it is a written language. We used the same roman alphabet in writing. The only difference is that we pronounce certain letters differently."
Listen to the clip to get her pronunciations; I'll butcher them if I try and translate them phonetically. She finished her intro with this:
Now, I'm sure that everyone here knows that we in South Africa are still colonized. The colonizers in my country call this the Click Song -- simply because they find it rather difficult saying (I'm not even gonna try - BD)."
Addendum
Here's the Guardian's obituary of Makeba. It's worth a read; she had a pretty crazy life.
The South African apartheid regime revoked her passport sometime around 1959 or 1960, leaving her in exile until Nelson Mandela came peacefully to power. This is a bit sad:
After 30 years away, Miriam returned to South Africa to a respectful reception and performed sporadically. But the music business had moved on during her long absence and, despite working with the hot-shot producer and multi-instrumentalist Sipho Mabuse, the opportunities for giving concerts had diminished.
Many younger South Africans had no idea who Miriam Makeba was or what she had struggled for on their behalf. Others recognised her value and she was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Durban, who declared her to be a cultural ambassador for the country; and when she announced her retirement in 2005, she found that "everyone keeps calling me and saying 'You have not come to say goodbye to us!'"
"She was a mother to our struggle and to the young nation of ours," Mandela said in a statement. "Her haunting melodies gave voice to the pain of exile and dislocation which she felt for 31 long years. At the same time, her music inspired a powerful sense of hope in all of us."
It was "fitting", Mandela, said, that Makeba died supporting a good cause. Sunday night's concert was to support Robert Saviano, the Italian author who has lived in hiding since publishing Gomorrah, a best-selling expose of the Camorra mafia group who, among many other crimes, are blamed for killing six African immigrants in Castel Volturno in September.
Makeba's family, who noted in a statement that she had performed one of greatest hits, Pata Pata - Xhosa for Touch, Touch - shortly before collapsing as the crowd called for an encore, said: "Whilst this great lady was alive she would say: 'I will sing until the last day of my life'."