Miriam Makeba
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"Zenzile Miriam Makeba", nicknamed "Mama Africa", was a Grammy Award-winning South African singer and civil rights movement/civil rights activist.

In the 1960s, she was the first artist from Africa to popularize African music 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, such as Harry Belafonte, Paul Simon, and her former husband Hugh Masekela.

Makeba campaigned against the South African system of apartheid. The South African government responded by revoking her passport in 1960 and her citizenship and right of return in 1963. As the apartheid system crumbled she returned home for the first time in 1990.

Makeba died of a heart attack on 9 November 2008 after performing in 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.

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I sang in Los Angeles recently and a band that had managed to get out of New Orleans played there. They asked me for one or to songs for a CD being recorded. My group and I said yes, we were ready to contribute in that way, the only way we have.

I was so scared. Such a big orchestra.

People in the United States still have a 'Tarzan' movie view of Africa. That's because in the movies all you see are jungles and animals . . . We [too] watch television and listen to the radio and go to dances and fall in love.

I look at an ant and l see myself: a native South African, endowed by nature with a strength much greater than my size so I might cope with the weight of a racism that crushes my spirit.

Ours was a marriage, a love affair -- the land would nurture us, and we would honor the land. But the land was too rich and too good. The powerful and greedy invaders saw this at once.

I look at a stream and I see myself: a native South African, flowing irresistibly over hard obstacles until they become smooth and, one day, disappear -- flowing from an origin that has been forgotten toward an end that will never be.

Age is…wisdom, if one has lived one's life properly.

I have to go and say farewell to all the countries that I have been to, if I can. I am 73 now, it is taxing on me.