Lyrics | Artists | Miriam Makeba

Miriam Makeba

A singer, actress and civil rights campaigner, Miriam Makeba was one of South Africa's most legendary performers, popularising her native music all over the world and so revered she became known as Mama Africa. Born in Johannesburg, her mother was a "Swazi sangoma" (herbal healer) whose imprisonment for selling home-made beer meant that Miriam spent the first six months of her life in jail. Her music career began in the early 1950s when she joined the jazz group Manhattan Brothers, leaving them for an all-female group The Skylarks mixing jazz with traditional South African songs....