Blowing Hope: Miriam Makeba and "West Wind"

Legendary singer Miriam Makeba brings us today's random song, called West Wind. A South African singer, actor, UN Goodwill Ambassador and civil rights activist, she released several popular songs and albums in the United States with her best known being Pata Pata in 1967. Of mixed Swazi and Xhosa lineage, she began her career singing in the vocal style of mbube, which draws upon indigenous music, American jazz, ragtime and Anglican church hymns. Her music is often associated with Afropop and world music. She sang in many languages, but never Afrikaans, the language of white South Africans, because she said "When Afrikaaners sing in my language, I'll sing in theirs." She saw her music as a tool for activism, and her civil rights activism against apartheid was well known; however she did not describe her music as political, but rather as a reflection of her experience and pain growing up and living under apartheid. Her reputation as an anti-apartheid activist, however, meant that many of her songs, political or not, were banned by the South African regime. She was a friend and frequent collaborator with Harry Belafonte, she was married to South African jazz musician Hugh Masekela from 1963-68, was good friends with Nina Simone and a whole host of entertainers and activists who believed that music and activism could and should reinforce each other. In 1968 she married American Black Panther leader Stokely Carmichael, which soured US audiences on her and she and Carmichael left the United States to live in Guinea. West Wind can be found on her 1966 album The Magnificent Miriam Makeba, her 1967 album Pata Pata, as well as on compilation albums, including the album I got it from, 2017's Zaire 74: The African Artists, which is a live album of the African artists who performed at that famous concert.

Listen to songs like this and more on the KUNM Global Music Show every Monday night from 10 pm - 1 am Mountain Standard Time. Live streaming, program information and the two-week digital archive can be found at http://www.kunm.org.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miriam_Makeba