Miriam Makeba Quotes
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There are three things I was born with in this world, and there are three things I will have until the day I die-hope, determination, and song.
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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.
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But if you are going to wear blinders then you do not know the world.
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I titled the album Reflections because I am reflecting on my music career.
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It is very much the theme of our President, President Thabo Mbeki, whose passion is for Africa to work together, and for Africans to get up and do things for us. We are trying as women to do things for ourselves.
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I see other black women imitate my style, which is no style at all, but just letting our hair be itself. They call it the Afro Look.
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And why is our music called world music? I think people are being polite. What they want to say is that it's third world music. Like they use to call us under developed countries, now it has changed to developing countries, it's much more polite.
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It was hard to be away from home, but I am glad that I am home now.
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In New York I heard A Piece of Ground, written by a white South African, Jeremy Taylor. I modified it a little and sang it myself. That song is very special to me because it deals with the land question in southern Africa. We were dispossessed of our land.
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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.
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African music, though very old, is always being rediscovered in the West.
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I didn't have much, but I was always happy to share what I did have. It seemed like every African that came to New York City would show up at my apartment door at dinnertime, and I couldn't turn them away. I wasn't much older than any of them, but they started calling me 'Mama Africa' and the name stuck.
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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.
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In those years, when I came to the States, people were always asking me why I didn't sing anymore. I'd tell them, 'I sing all around the world-Asia, Africa, Europe-but if you don't sing in the US, then you haven't really made it.' That's why I'll always be grateful to Paul Simon. He allowed me to bring my music back to my friends in this country.
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Well there is a lot of work here for younger and older musicians now. Our Ministry of Culture has now really embarked on changing things for artists, and it is getting much better. We just have to organize ourselves as artists, and then things will be better.
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In the West the past is like a dead animal. It is a carcass picked at by the flies that call themselves historians and biographers. But in my culture the past lives. My people feel this way in part because death does not separate us from our ancestors.
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I do not sing politics. I merely sing the truth.
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Belafonte'd take me to perform for Martin Luther King's cause. But when they were marching I did not take part, because I was not a citizen
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In the mind, in the heart, I was always home. I always imagined, really, going back home.
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I look at an ant and I 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.