Makeba would've been 81 on Monday as she was born on 4 March 1932 and died of a heart attack in November 2008. She is the first South African to be honoured with her own Google doodle.
She was nicknamed Mama Africa, was a Grammy Award-winning South African singer and a civil rights activist.
In the 1960s she was the first artist from Africa to popularise African music in the U.S. and around the world.
She is best known for the song Pata Pata, first recorded in 1957 and released in the U.S. in 1967. She recorded and toured with many popular artists, including Harry Belafonte, Paul Simon, and her former husband Hugh Masekela.
She actively campaigned against the South African system of apartheid. As a result, she discovered that her South African passport had been revoked in 1960 and three years later the South African government revoked her citizenship and right of return in her country of birth. She returned home for the first time in 1990 as the apartheid system crumbled and South Africa prepared for its first democratic elections.
Makeba died of a heart attack on 9 November 2008 after performing at a concert in Italy organised to support writer Roberto Saviano in his stand against the Camorra, a mafia-like organisation local to the region of Campania.
Source: Sowetan via I-Net Bridge
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