INTRO

Some years ago, in 2005, I found myself browsing through records at a thrift store in Richmond, Virginia and came across the LP, An Evening with Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba. It was two dollars!

The album dated from 1965, and I was immediately struck by the strong political message in the liner notes, critiquing the then white minority government of South Africa and its racial policies. I began to reflect upon how these mass-produced commodities (LP records), issued all over the world, were a perfect and significant vehicle for spreading an anti-apartheid message.

I set a goal of accumulating as many examples as I could of those messages and in the process discovered some amazing music. The research subsequently developed into an extensive art project documenting the work of Miriam Makeba.

Assembled over multiple years of sifting through internet auctions and receiving thousands of emails, I collected Makeba recordings and ephemera from all over the world. In an effort to map the journey of each record (and by implication Makeba’s voice), I catalogued where each was first recorded and where each was purchased. Numbering over 500 individually acquired items, the collection now includes thirty 78 rpm shellac discs, 266 vinyl LP records, 151 singles, a number of four-track reel-to-reel tapes, eight-track cartridges, cassette tapes, compact discs, DVDs, test records, an acetate demo recording, plus an original 16 mm print of Lionel Rogosin’s 1959 film, Come Back Africa.

I began exploring various visual strategies with this material and in 2009, I presented a number of artwork installations at the Bank Gallery in Durban, South Africa. I photographed every label in the collection, arranged them chronologically in a tight grid, and pinned the images to a black wall. The installation Labels became a visual document of Makeba’s life work but also formed an abstract color field that was for me reminiscent of a kind of craft work in South Africa.

Covers, the second work produced from this archive, assembled in a free-hanging clear plastic curtain, included the covers of one example of each of her recordings arranged chronologically, along with each iteration of that issue by country. The installation revealed Makeba’s changing portrait over time and the expanding global reach of her message. The clear curtain also made the rear liner notes accessible allowing the viewer to compare different pressings of identical albums and see how political content had been edited based on country of origin.

It was during this exhibition that Graeme Gilfillan of the ZM Makeba Trust and Siyandisa Music made contact with me. Graeme traveled to Durban to see the work and thus began a conversation around Miriam Makeba, her legacy and the roots of what would eventually become this compact disc.

In the years that followed, I found myself slowly expanding the limits of the collection to include any audio artifact from South Africa—jazz, punk, plays, political speeches, sports commentary, and so on. In 2010 I launched a non-profit, searchable online database as a visual archive for the broader South African collection at flatinternational.org. The following year I began blogging about this research at Electric Jive.


MIRIAM MAKEBA ON 78 RPM • 1955-1959
Compiled by Siemon Allen

After I assembled a compilation of less common material by Miriam Makeba, Tracks Less Travelled, for Electric Jive in October 2011, I promised to follow up with more, equally rare, sounds by the singer on 78 rpm. This second compilation, originally posted at Electric Jive in December 2012, features tracks that all come from the period before Makeba left South Africa in August 1959 and in many ways trace the growth of her early career—first as an individual (after many recordings with the Manhattan Brothers and others) and then with the all-female, close-harmony groups: the Sunbeams and the Skylarks. To my knowledge, none of the material here (save for one track) has been reissued in any subsequent format. Most of this material has not been heard in almost 60 years by anyone but the most ardent collectors.

I compiled the collection below in chronological order based on the matrix numbers of each recording and the results not only trace the evolution, but also paint a portrait of an artist (and indeed a culture) open to a broad range of stylistic influences—even before her departure from South Africa. Calypso, gospel, close-harmony American popular music of the 1940s and 50s and most significantly American jazz; all combined with local traditions to establish an eclectic palette. The source of the calypso is not hard to pin point. Makeba’s first two tracks in this style (recorded in 1957) are cover versions from Harry Belafonte’s classic and influential 1956 album Calypso (the first album to sell over one million copies in the United States). A fortuitous sampling—two years later it would be Belafonte himself launching Makeba’s global career. Indeed Makeba was an icon and pioneer who did not restrict herself to one culture but drew material from many languages and styles worldwide: Xhosa, Zulu, Swazi, English, French, Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Guinean and so on. She truly was a global singer.

Miriam Makeba began her career singing with her second nephew, Zweli Kunene, and his group the Cuban Brothers possibly as early as 1952. It was with the Cubans that Makeba made her first recordings, at that time, for EMI. In her biography, My Story, Makeba recalls that it was while the Cubans were performing at the Donaldson Centre in Orlando East that she was spotted by Nathan Mdledle, lead vocalist of the Manhattan Brothers—South Africa’s most popular vocal group at that time. In 1953, at the age of 21, Makeba joined Mdledle, Joe Mogotsi, Ronnie Majola and Rufus Khoza—the Manhattan Brothers—as their single female singer replacing Emily Kwenane, who was looking to pursue a solo career. Mdledle opted for her English given name as a stage name rather than Zenzi Makeba and Miriam Makeba became a star. Mackay Davashe’s Laku Tshon iLanga was her first big hit with the Manhattans but not her first recording. (That may have been Nomasonto.) Gallo had sent the recording to a number of companies overseas and subsequently requested that the group re-record the song in English for an international market. With the help of American composer, Tom Glazer, Lovely Lies was the result pressed on the London label. Though Makeba later described how she felt that much of the core social drama of the original had been removed from the English version. The song became their first big international hit and also the first South African song to enter the Billboard Top 100 in the United States in February 1956.

Sometime in 1954 Makeba left the Manhattans to join Alf Herbert’s touring show African Jazz and Variety featuring Dorothy Masuka, Dolly Rathebe and Lionel Pillay amongst others and then was again reunited with the Manhattans on Ian Bernhardt’s variety show Township Jazz in 1955. She also recorded tracks under her own name for Gallotone in that same year.

Early in 1956 Sam Alcock at Gallo encouraged Makeba to form an all female vocal group to compete with similar acts at Troubadour and Trutone. She with her sister Mizpah and Johanna Radebe recorded two tracks as the Sunbeams on the Tropik label. The record sold well and the group was brought back into the studio but this time as the Skylarks on Gallo’s Gallotone label. The women continued to record under both names for both labels. For the second session Mizpah was replaced by Mary Rabotapi who was fourteen at the time. The trio then expanded to four with the recruitment of Mummy Girl Nketle. Helen van Rensburg succeeded Johanna Radebe and in late 1957 Van Rensburg was subsequently replaced by Abigail Kubeka who was sixteen at the time.

The group was now set for many of the classic recordings of the late 1950s. On occasion a fifth female voice in Nomonde Sihawu would join the quartet with Sam Ngakane on bass. The Skylarks were prolific and in three years became South Africa’s most popular vocal group recording over one hundred tracks and rivaling any of Gallo’s other major acts.

Between 1957 and 1958 planning and rehearsals began on what would become the biggest hit of 1959, South Africa’s first all-black African jazz opera: King Kong. The show was produced and directed by Leon Gluckman with music written by Todd Matshikza and included some of the key artists and musicians of the day. Makeba played the lead female role as Joyce, the girlfriend of the legendary and tragic boxer Ezekiel Dlamini, who was played by Nathan Mdledle. Other members of both the Manhattans Brothers and the Skylarks including Joe Mogotsi and Abigail Kubeka were also featured in the cast. The show opened to racially mixed audiences at the Wits Great Hall in February 1959 and then toured the country with much success for the next six months

Meanwhile, Lionel Rogosin, a young American filmmaker had spotted Makeba performing in African Jazz and Variety in 1958 and recruited her to sing in his clandestine film about township life in South Africa: Come Back Africa (named for the ANC’s freedom call Mayibuye iAfrica). The film was accepted into the 1959 Venice Film Festival and Rogosin invited Makeba to join him at the premier in Venice. Makeba applied for a passport to travel abroad and after many months of waiting, and what she later described as a harassing interview, she received one and subsequently left South Africa in August 1959. The film won the critics' award at Venice.

A few days prior to her departure around mid-August, Makeba joined the Skylarks in a final studio session at Gallo. One of the last songs recorded, aptly titled Miriam’s Goodbye to Africa, was only released after she had already left but became one of the Skylarks most successful tracks.

Makeba’s importance as an anti-apartheid figure is significant and well-documented. But I wonder if a new generation of South African listeners are aware of how singularly important she was to this movement and the global image of South Africa during these turbulent times? Before Mandela, Makeba was the face of South Africa to a global audience. 1960 is a watershed year in South African history. It is the year that Makeba released her first album in the United States, Europe and many other countries, but more importantly it is also the year of the Sharpeville massacre. The shootings were covered in the international press like no other prior event in South African history. The coverage sat on the front page of The New York Times for almost two months and during this time Makeba was performing in New York, on US national television, and was broadly covered and reviewed in the U.S. press. For many Americans she became the single face, literally, of a distant country in crisis.


FINAL THOUGHTS

In 2010 the Makeba! art project was presented for the first time in the United States in Imaging South Africa, an extensive exhibition of my work curated by Ashley Kistler at the Anderson Gallery in Richmond, Virginia. In 2011 the installation then travelled to the Krannert Art Museum in Champaign, Illinois for an exhibition curated by Tumelo Mosaka.

In July 2015 Derek Smith at Siyandisa Music contacted me about obtaining copies of the tracks featured in the blogposts at Electric Jive. Along with Graeme Gilfillan, we began the conversation of bringing these rare tracks into the ZM Makeba Trust fold and the possibility of turning the compilations into permanent CD reissues. I would like to thank Graeme Gilfillan, Derek Smith and all at Siyandisa Music for transforming an online investigation into hard-copy reality! Certainly I must also thank Chris Albertyn, Matt Temple and Nick Lotay, my colleagues at Electric Jive, for providing the platform and commitment to documenting South African music online. Moreover, none of this project would have been possible without the incredible assistance and support of my wife, Kendall Buster. Finally of course, I am indebted to Miriam Makeba for all the fantastic music! Who knew that a serendipitous find of a two dollar record in a junk store would mark the beginning of what would become an extensive archive of over 3000 items of South Africa audio history. Mayibuye!


Notes by Siemon Allen, March 2017


For more extensive liner notes about each track on this compilation visit the Electric Jive website and search for “Makeba on 78rpm”. For more information about the South African Audio Archive project visit flatinternational.org.

Business Affairs: Graeme Gilfillan. Special thanks to: Siemon Allen for his dedication and tireless research on the Miriam Makeba history. Also Thanks To: Dumisani Motha (Siyandisa Music), Charles Kühn, Paul de Klerk, Emil Stark, Rob O’ Brien, June Patal & Derek Smith (Next Music). Compilation by: Siemon Allen. Sleeve design by: Carla Vieira (idDigital Studios). Digitally remastered by: Deon Janse Van Vuuren (IU Studios)