COMPOSERS: Jerry Ragovoy,Miriam Makeba
LABELS: Warner
PERFORMER: Miriam Makeba (vocals)
CATALOGUE NO: 9362-47064-2
South African MIRIAM MAKEBA has been striding the world since the Sixties, and the return of an album from her early prime shows why. Quite apart from her breakthrough song ‘Pata Pata’, the first international hit single from Africa, and the famous ‘Click Song No. 1’ with guitar and bass, everything abounds with the energy and spirit that exile could not touch.
Now that we are used to taking African music on its own terms the arrangements sound rather quaintly Westernised – listen to the strings on ‘West Wind’ – but that was the way to get across, and the voice is the real thing. For that, the next musical generations owe her.
