Miriam Makeba. (Music) (column)

Miriam Makeba

My life, my career, every song I sing and every appearance I make, are bound up with the plight of my people.

--Miriam Makeba

With the exception of Bob Marley's, perhaps no musical career since Paul Robeson's has illustrated so forcefully the bitter fruits of imperialism and racism as Miriam Makeba's. For the first time in years, Makeba has come out from under the censor's thumb (the entertainment industry's racist categories) and released a new record. Sangoma (Warner Bros.), the world for a diviner-healer like Makeba's own Swazi mother, seeks in part to resolve the rifts driven deep into African societies by their European conquerors. By collecting songs from various tribal cultures, it illustrates the working relationship between music and life. Whether they're intended for social events like calling forth healing spirits or for more mundane tasks like teaching young Xhosas how to make the clicks that are part of their language, Makeba wraps the songs in her rich and supple voice--now lilting and yodeling, now throaty and intent --to stunning effect. She subtly varies the arrangements and presentations, shaping her adaptations to convey the spirit of the original settings without lapsing into the dusty museumpiece format so beloved of folklorists. It's obvious that kind of treatment wouldn't occur to her; for Makeba, as for the peoples she's representing on this disk, the sounds caught here …