La voix légendaire de Miriam Makeba s’est éteinte


Article publié le
10/11/2008
Dernière mise à jour le
10/11/2008 à 16:08 TUL'un des symboles de la lutte contre l'apartheid, Miriam Makeba, est
morte hier soir à l’âge de 76 ans, d'une crise cardiaque, près de
Naples, en Italie. La chanteuse sud-africaine, connue également sous le
nom de Mama Africa, venait de participer à un concert de
soutien à l'écrivain Roberto Saviano, menacé par la mafia. Elle s'est
effondrée en coulisses, juste après avoir chanté. Sa biographie
détaillée sur le site RFI musique.
Miriam Makeba en concert près de Naples, en Italie, le 9 novembre.
(Photo : AFP)


Imprimer l'article
Envoyer l'article
Réagir à l'article

Avec notre correspondante à Rome, Anne Le Nir La
célèbre chanteuse sud-africaine donnait ce concert dans le cadre d’un
spectacle contre la Camorra et le racisme, et pour soutenir l’écrivain
napolitain Roberto Saviano, âgé de 29 ans, qui depuis le succès mondial
de son livre-enquête Gomorra est menacé de mort par la mafia.Hier
soir, Miriam Makeba était la dernière artiste à monter sur scène vers
21h30, après le passage d’autres chanteurs. Devant un public restreint
mais très enthousiaste, elle a chanté pendant une demi-heure,
accompagnée de sept musiciens, donnant toute son énergie pour ce
concert auquel elle n’a pas voulu renoncer malgré son état fiévreux.Philippe Sawadogo



Ministre burkinabè de la Culture

« Miriam Makeba, c’est le symbole de la lutte anti-apartheid. »




10/11/2008 par Muriel Maalouf




Dès qu’elle est rentrée en coulisse, elle s’est évanouie. Son agent
italien a immédiatement compris que la situation était préoccupante.
Une ambulance l’a transportée en toute hâte dans une clinique de Castel
Volturno où les médecins ont diagnostiqué une crise cardiaque. Après
avoir reçu les premiers soins d’urgence, « Mama Africa » semblait se
reprendre, mais elle a succombé à une seconde crise cardiaque, laissant
comme tout dernier souvenir les images de son visage solaire et si
souriant sur la scène d’une petite ville napolitaine.Miriam Makeba



« J'étais toujours la seule qui aimait chanter
les chansons de chez nous. Les autres imitaient tout le temps les
artistes américains. »




10/11/2008

Mama Africa, chanteuse engagée

Avec notre correspondante à Johannesbourg, Miriam Makeba nous a quittés la nuit dernière et l'Afrique du Sud pleure déjà celle que l'on appelait ici « Mama Africa » et qui était reconnue, au-delà du continent, comme une des plus grandes chanteuses au monde. Née à Johannesburg en 1932, cette grande dame de la musique a embrassé à 20 ans une carrière de chanteuse qu'elle ne quittera plus. Sa chanson « Pata Pata », écrite en 1956 a, par exemple, fait le tour du monde. Elle paiera son engagement politique et sa dénonciation du régime raciste de l'apartheid au prix d'un exil de 31 ans aux Etats-Unis et ne retrouvera son pays natal qu'en 1990, à la libération de Nelson Mandela. Après une tournée d'adieu en 2005, Miriam Makeba s'était depuis engagée dans différentes causes humanitaires, notamment dans la lutte contre le sida, sans pour autant s'arrêter de chanter.

November 11, 2008



Miriam Makeba, Singer, Dies at 76



By ALAN COWELL






LONDON — Miriam Makeba, a South
African singer whose voice stirred hopes of freedom among millions in
her own country though her music was formally banned by the apartheid
authorities she struggled against, died overnight after performing at a
concert in Italy on Sunday. She was 76.
The cause of death was cardiac arrest, according to Vincenza Di
Saia, a physician at the private Pineta Grande clinic in Castel
Volturno near Naples in southern Italy, where she was brought by
ambulance. The time of death was listed in hospital records as
midnight, the doctor said.
Ms. Makeba collapsed as she was leaving the stage, the South African
authorities said. She had been singing at a concert in support of
Roberto Saviano, an author who has received death threats after writing
about organized crime.
Widely known as “Mama Africa,” she had been a prominent exiled
opponent of apartheid since the South African authorities revoked her
passport in 1960 and refused to allow her to return after she traveled
abroad. She was prevented from attending her mother’s funeral after
touring in the United States.
Although Ms. Makeba had been weakened by osteoarthritis, her death stunned many in South Africa,
where she stood as an enduring emblem of the travails of black people
under the apartheid system of racial segregation that ended with the
release from prison of Nelson Mandela in 1990 and the country’s first fully democratic elections in 1994.
In a statement on Monday, Mr. Mandela said the death “of our beloved Miriam has saddened us and our nation.”
He continued: “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.”
“She was South Africa’s first lady of song and so richly deserved
the title of Mama Afrika. She was a mother to our struggle and to the
young nation of ours,” Mr. Mandela’s was one of many tributes from
South African leaders.
“One of the greatest songstresses of our time has ceased to sing,”
Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said in a statement.
“Throughout her life, Mama Makeba communicated a positive message to
the world about the struggle of the people of South Africa and the
certainty of victory over the dark forces of apartheid and colonialism
through the art of song.”
For 31 years, Ms. Makeba lived in exile, variously in the United
States, France, Guinea and Belgium. South Africa’s state broadcasters
banned her music after she spoke out against apartheid at the United Nations.
“I never understood why I couldn’t come home,” Ms. Makeba said upon her
return at an emotional homecoming in Johannesburg in 1990 as the
apartheid system began to crumble, according to The Associated Press.
“I never committed any crime.”
Music was a central part of the struggle against apartheid. The
South African authorities of the era exercised strict censorship of
many forms of expression, while many foreign entertainers discouraged
performances in South Africa in an attempt to isolate the white
authorities and show their opposition to apartheid.
From exile she acted as a constant reminder of the events in her
homeland as the white authorities struggled to contain or pre-empt
unrest among the black majority.
Ms. Makeba wrote in 1987: “I kept my culture. I kept the music of my
roots. Through my music I became this voice and image of Africa, and
the people, without even realizing.”
She was married several times and her husbands included the American
black activist Stokely Carmichael, with whom she lived in Guinea, and
the jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela, who also spent many years in exile.
In the United States she became a star, touring with Harry Belafonte
in the 1960s and winning a Grammy award with him in 1965. Such was her
following and fame that she sang in 1962 at the birthday party of
President John F. Kennedy. She also performed with Paul Simon on his Graceland concert in Zimbabwe in 1987.
But she fell afoul of the U.S. music industry because of her marriage to Mr. Carmichael and her decision to live in Guinea.
In one of her last interviews, in May 2008 with the British music
critic Robin Denselow, she said she found her concerts in the United
States being cancelled. “It was not a ban from the government. It was a
cancellation by people who felt I should not be with Stokely because he
was a rebel to them. I didn’t care about that. He was somebody I loved,
who loved me, and it was my life,” she said.
Ms. Makeba was born in Johannesburg on March 4, 1932, the daughter
of a Swazi mother and a father from the Xhosa people who live mainly in
the eastern Cape region of South Africa. She became known to South
Africans in the Sophiatown district of Johannesburg in the 1950s.
According to Agence France-Presse, she was often short of money and
could not afford to buy a coffin when her only daughter in 1985. She
buried her alone, barring a handful of journalists from covering the
funeral.
She was particularly renowned for her performances of songs such as
what was known as the Click Song — named for a clicking sound in her
native tongue — or “Qongoqothwane,” and Pata Pata, meaning Touch Touch
in Xhosa. Her style of singing was widely interpreted as a blend of
black township rhythms, jazz and folk music.
In her interview in 2008, Ms. Makeba said: “I’m not a political
singer. I don’t know what the word means. People think I consciously
decided to tell the world what was happening in South Africa. No! I was
singing about my life, and in South Africa we always sang about what
was happening to us — especially the things that hurt us.”
In a tribute, Jacob Zuma, head of the ruling African National Congress,
said the party “dips its banner in tribute to an African heroine,
Miriam Zenzile Makeba, a freedom fighter and outstanding African
cultural figure.”
“Miriam Makeba used her voice, not merely to entertain, but to give
a voice to the millions of oppressed South Africans under the yoke of
apartheid,” Mr. Zuma said.


Celia W. Dugger contributed reporting from Johannesburg and Rachel Donadio from Rome.

La mort de Miriam Makeba, une grande voix africaine





Par Pierre Haski | Rue89 | 10/11/2008 | 09H42




Une grande voix a disparu dimanche soir. Et elle est partie en
beauté, comme elle a vécu, dans l'engagement en faveur de causes
universelles. Miriam Makeba, la "Mama Africa", la "mère de l'Afrique"
comme elle avait été surnommée, a succombé dimanche soir à une attaque
cardiaque à l'age de 76 ans, immédiatement après avoir chanté à un
concert, à Naples, en faveur de l'écrivain italien menacé par la mafia,
Roberto Saviano, l'auteur de "Gomora".
La chanteuse sud-africaine, universellement connue pour son tube
"Pata Pata", a longtemps incarné l'engagement contre l'apartheid, le
système de discrimination raciale institutionalisée mis en place dans
son pays à partir de 1948. Elle a payé son engagement de 31 ans d'exil,
auquel elle n'a mis fin qu'à la libération de Nelson Mandela en 1990.
Voici un cadeau pour saluer son départ: ces images extraordinaires
datent de la fin des années 50, et la jeune Miriam Makeba chante dans
l'ambiance d'un shebeen, ces bars clandestins où la bière coule à
flots, installés dans les maisonnettes de Soweto, le grand ghetto noir
à côté de Johannesburg. C'est dans ce milieu que s'est forgée une
musique des townships, mix de jazz et de ryhtmes africains. (Voir la vidéo)




Contrainte à l'exil en raison de ses prises de position, alors que
Nelson Mandela et la plupart des dirigeants du Congrès national
africain (ANC) étaient emprisonnés au pénitencier de Robben Island,
Miriam Makeba a incarné à travers le monde la résistance à l'apartheid.

Fidèle à son engagement, elle s'est d'abord installée dans la Guinée
d'Ahmed Sekou Touré, qui faisait figure, dans les années 60, de fer de
lance contre le colonialisme. Elle n'a pas voulu se désolidariser de
lui quand l'ancien syndicaliste est devenu un abominable dictateur.
Mais lorsque sa fille est morte en donnant naissance à son enfant, en
1985, en raison de l'état de décomposition du système de santé guinéen,
Miriam Makeba, meurtrie, a quitté Conakry poour s'installer à Bruxelles.
La chanteuse a été mariée à deux grandes personnalités, le génial
trompétiste de jazz sud-africain Hugh Masekela, et le dirigeant des
Panthères noires Stokely Carmichael, originaire de Trinidad, lui aussi
réfugié en Guinée alors qu'il était menacé de prison aux Etats-Unis.
Elle avait annoncé en 2005 qu'elle mettait fin à sa carrière,
s'estimant, à 73 ans, trop fatiguée pour parcourir le monde. Mais elle
ne savait pas dire non aux invitations à défendre les causes auxquelles
elle croyait, contre le sida ou pour la liberté d'expression, comme
dans le cas de Roberto Saviano.
En dernier hommage à une grande dame, (ré)écoutez le célèbre "Pata Pata", vieux d'un demi-siècle et qui lui survivra. (Voir la vidéo)




Photo: Miriam Makeba en concert à Cape Town en 2006 (Mike Hutchings/Reuters).

Hundreds bid farewell to Makeba

Mourners paid their respects to the singer known as Mama Africa

Large crowds have flocked to a
memorial service in Johannesburg for South African singer Miriam
Makeba, who died last weekend after a concert in Italy.
Musicians, poets and politicians paid tribute to the 76-year-old performer.
Arts minister Pallo Jordan described Makeba as "a woman whose
name became synonymous with the worldwide struggle for freedom in South
Africa".
Her family also attended the service at the Coca Cola Dome concert venue, which followed two days of national mourning.
They are expected to hold a smaller service for her cremation on Sunday.
The singer, who was known as Mama Africa, spent more than 30
years in exile after lending her support to the campaign against
apartheid.

Her music reverberated with consciousness about the real conditions of South Africans President Kgalema Motlanthe

Her memorial service drew hundreds of mourners, both black and white and of all ages.
South African trumpet player Hugh Masekela, once married to
Makeba, performed a solo version of her song Welele to the
accompaniment of soft clapping from the crowd.
Poet Maishe Maponya spoke of how her "lips touched our hearts
with hymns of beauty" and how she had inspired her people with hope for
the future.
Former South African President Thabo Mbeki and current Deputy President Baleka Mbete were also present.
President Kgalema Motlanthe, in Washington for a G20 economic summit, paid tribute to Makeba in a video message.
"Let us say it loud and clear. Miriam Makeba was not
affectionately called Mama Africa for nothing," he said. "Her music
reverberated with consciousness about the real conditions of South
Africans."
Makeba was the first black singer to win a Grammy award, which she shared with Harry Belafonte in 1965.
She was one of Africa's best known singers, famed for hits such as Pata Pata and The Click Song.
Former president Nelson Mandela said she was the "mother of our struggle" and "South Africa's first lady of song".
Her body was flown home to South Africa on Wednesday; the country began a period of national mourning a day later.





http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7729701.stm