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South Africa

Juluka, Savuka, "Le Zoulou Blanc"

Johnny Clegg

Born in England in 1953 and raised in Johannesburg, Johnny Clegg learned Zulu guitar and dance as a teenager from migrant workers. In 1969 he began playing with Sipho Mchunu, the partnership that became Juluka, a racially mixed band at a time when apartheid law made that alone illegal. Clegg was arrested as a teenager. Juluka was kept off state radio, so they played universities, churches and embassies instead. His later band, Savuka, found a huge following in France, where he became known as "Le Zoulou Blanc." He was also a lecturer in social anthropology, and he was honored in France, South Africa and Britain before he died of cancer in Johannesburg in 2019.

Thirty years in exile, 1960–1990

Miriam Makeba

Miriam Makeba came up in 1950s Johannesburg singing with the Manhattan Brothers, the only woman in the group, and then with her own Skylarks. A role in the 1959 anti-apartheid film Come Back, Africa took her abroad. In 1960, when she tried to go home for her mother's funeral, South Africa revoked her passport, and some thirty years of exile began. In the US, with Harry Belafonte as her mentor, she shared a Grammy with him and testified against apartheid at the United Nations. Her 1968 marriage to Black Power activist Stokely Carmichael wrecked her American career, and she moved to Guinea. She returned to South Africa only in 1990, at Nelson Mandela's urging. She died in Italy in 2008, just after coming off stage.

Soweto, exile, and home again

Letta Mbulu

Letta Mbulu grew up in Soweto. As a teenager she was singing with the Skylarks and appearing in the jazz musical King Kong, and in 1964 she left South Africa to escape apartheid. In the United States she found fellow exiles Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela, recorded with Cannonball Adderley and toured with Harry Belafonte. With her husband, composer Caiphus Semenya, she also sang on Quincy Jones's soundtrack for the 1977 television series Roots. She came home in 1991 after more than a quarter of a century abroad, and has since received South Africa's Order of Ikhamanga.

The Collection