Miriam Makeba, the South African singer who for more than half a century brought the intricate rhythms of her native land to millions of listeners around the world and whose role as a spokeswoman against apartheid subjected her to 31 years of exile, died early Monday after a concert in Italy. She was 76.
Makeba apparently suffered a heart attack after performing onstage for about 30 minutes. She died shortly afterward at a private clinic near Naples, according to an Italian news agency report. A funeral will be held in South Africa.
"Her haunting melodies gave voice to the pain of exile and dislocation which she felt for 31 long years," former South African leader Nelson Mandela said in a statement issued by his foundation. Citing her nickname, "Mama Africa," he added: "She was a mother to our struggle and to the young nation of ours."
Makeba captivated audiences with a voice perfectly suited to the polyrhythmic chant-songs of African music, combining the clarity of a Joan Baez with the throaty authority of a Sarah Vaughan. Her fame in the U.S. peaked with the 1967 release of the single "Pata Pata," an upbeat dance tune that remained her best-known number to the end of her life. The song became the first top-20 U.S. single by an African artist.
By then she had already won international fame with a novelty number known familiarly as "The Click Song," for the way it incorporated the distinctive "click" sound of her native Xhosa tongue.
It was a reflection of troubled times that her career became identified with politics, first through her banishment in 1960 by the white apartheid regime of South Africa, and then through her 1968 marriage to the black American radical Stokely Carmichael.
After she and Carmichael toured Cuba, her American bookings evaporated and her U.S. recording contracts were canceled. "My manager said people weren't going to feed the hand that was going to slap them," she told The Times in 1988. "They saw my husband as a threat and me as a threat because I was married to him." But she insisted that her political protests were directed at South Africa, not the U.S. government.
The couple settled in Guinea at the invitation of President Sekou Toure, and divorced in 1978. Carmichael died in 1998.
