DESCRIPTION:
After Miriam Makeba had left South Africa, her name has outgrown her art, one cause of which may be that she was not being her entire self on most of the recordings she made. During her stay in Guinée-Conakry, for instance, she recorded material that was so far from her cradle it was pityful and her recordings for the Syliphone label to this day remain the laughing stock of the brilliant body of work that was released on that label.

Listening to the U.S. version of Pata Pata, it is clear she is talking about South Africa, being produced by a non-South African producer, accompanied by non-South African musicians, singing to a non-South African audience, so again, she was not being her entire self. Of course, she was not to be envied because leaving her country had been involuntary.

Perhaps, even (or especially) from her perspective, the greater goal of ending apartheid had a higher priority than producing great music. I guess she did a lot to raise the awareness in the western world, not only of apartheid, but that a country named South Africa even existed. After all, when she left, Nelson Mandela was still a "terrorist".

However, titles such as The Empress of African Song and Mama Africa were attached to her by some who were completely out of touch with reality, and these included herself, since I've witnessed her own band members announcing her in those terms on the stage. When I saw her live once in 1990, every member of the band had a different nationality. The gig was flesh nor fish.

The vast majority of the work she produced had nothing to do with African music, since nowhere on the continent music sounded like that, it was all western music with some African spices in it, no more. I'm sure she did her best work before she ever left South Africa and I hope some day a decent collection of that will see the light of day, perhaps it already has...?

Anyway, at the dawning of the impending great changes in South Africa, in 1988, she went back to her roots recording the Sangoma album. When that LP was released though, I was disappointed because to my ears, it was overproduced, since I had already heard this demo, which is basically all her own voices and only piano on 2 songs.

The entire demo (recorded in 1987 and/or 1986) and it's origins are further explained here: http://wrldsrv.blogspot.com/2008/11/sangoma.html , where it can also be downloaded. The demo is 24 minutes long, but since YouTube restricted me back to 15 minutes, I had to edit out 9 minutes. Titles between brackets are on the LP, if differing from the ones on the demo cassette.

00:00 Zeni Zenabo (Mabhongo)

01:13 Kwazulu (Emabhaceni)

02:32 Ingeyambula (Ingwemabala)

04:04 Ihoyiya

05:00 Ngiyakamayeka (Ngiya Khuyeka)

06:36 Nyakabe

07:49 Umhome

10:19 Piano Song

12:26 Abangoma (Baya Jabula)

13:38 no title

...