If you have ever wondered why Miriam Makeba is called Mama Africa, the release of her CD Forever should satisfy all curiosity.
Forever is a collection of previously released songs , but this time they have been rearranged. If being exposed to the worldly flavours is called being cosmopolitan, then Makeba here delivers a quintessentially Afropolitan take. It is music from all corners of the continent. Okay, nothing from the north of the Sahara, but you get the drift.
Still, it is Makeba’s musical libation to her ancestors, with the song Nyankwabe used as the specific language to call the spirits.
Numbers such as Ibhabhalazi and Nomeva represent local classics. From West Africa comes Sekou Famake, a traditional Guinean song.
From the east comes Pole Mze, a kiSwahili piece in praise of liberated Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta, and Malaika, another kiSwahili ballad that Makeba brought as a souvenir from her time in East Africa.
Makeba left South Africa with the cast of King Kong in the 1960s as the queen of song and returned at the end of apartheid as one of Africa and the world’s highly respected artists.
Forever reminds South Africans of how much they lost out by having one of its best singers-songwriters exiled and how much we eventually gained by getting her back.
Makeba’s musical repertoire is as wide as her travels and as deep as her life experiences.
Ntokozo Zungu’s Maskandi-based guitar-work on the song La Guinee Guine effortlessly blends two worlds — those of rural KwaZulu and the marketplaces of Guinea.
Zungu’s talents are allowed space by the disciplined structure that comes from the rest of the strings section, which includes two violins, a viola and a cello.
Marcus Wyatt’s haunting, muted trumpet in Toure (a dedication to former Guinean president Sekou Toure) is for me the highlight of a great CD.
Then again, those who know me would say that I could never find fault with Wyatt’s notes even if he deliberately went off tune.
Producers and arrangers, Guinean percussionist Papa Kouyate (who also plays on the CD) and Makeba’s grandson Nelson Lumumba Lee, should take a bow.
Forever is a dance, sing-along or listen to collection. It is as much a dedication toy the music itself as it is to the experiences that inspired it.
Makeba says in the sleeve that this is a collection of ‘songs that I have always liked”. It is easy to see why.