1. Pata Pata. Miriam Makeba

I thought that I had played my swan song on this blog but it seems that K thought otherwise. She picked this song, but it is one that we both love. K gave me this record for Christmas a number of years ago.

Miriam Makeba, Mama Africa, first performed in the 1950s, and died in November 2008 at the age of 76. She was a genius in combining traditional Xhosa folk songs (notably those using "clicking") with jazz rhythms, and attracted a lot of attention outside her native South Africa ... which she used to bring attention to the injustice of apartheid. Mama Africa's role in this musical revolution cost her her passport in 1960 and resulted in her losing her citizenship and being exiled from her homeland in 1963. She finally returned to South Africa in 1992, after the revolution succeeded.

I remember a small but (to me) important part of that musical revolution, when in 1986 or 87 a South African band called Amandla came to play at an anti-apartheid benefit at the Cornerstone pub in St. John's. There was a lot of enthusiastic dancing and, consequently, the need for refreshment. The bar specials that night were all Carling-O'Keefe, at that time still heavily invested in South Africa. Struck by the incongruity, several of us launched what I guess was my first ever campaign, convincing university students to buy more expensive beer!

Miriam Makeba wrote Pata Pata in her teens, and it was one of her biggest hits. As she sings, it's a song about "a dance we do down Johannesburg way...." The words "pata pata" apparently refer to touching, but other than that I have never been able find out the meaning of the Xhosa lyrics. I like to think that the song is about finding joy in the midst of struggle and oppression. And I suppose, as a call to dance, it is.