Legendary South African songstress Miriam Makeba, as you may already have heard, has died at the age of 76, soon after performing at a concert in Italy. Nelson Mandela has paid tribute to the singer, who spent three decades exiled from her home country, saying: "She richly deserved the title of Mama Afrika. Her music inspired a powerful sense of hope in all of us. Even after she returned home she continued to use her name to make a difference by mentoring musicians and supporting struggling young women".
South Africa's governing African National Congress (ANC) also paid tribute, Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma saying: "Throughout her life, Mama Makeba communicated a positive message to the world about the struggle of the people of South Africa and the certainty of victory over the dark forces of apartheid and colonialism through the art of song".
Makeba, who was born in Johannesburg, began her singing career in the fifties and gained notoriety on an international level when she toured the US in 1959, and performed at JFK's birthday party in 1962. Not long after this, her passport was revoked because she appeared in an anti-apartheid documentary, and she did not return home until Nelson Mandela was released from Prison back in 1990.
The first black African woman to win a Grammy Award, she once said of her material, which incorporated traditional and modern styles: "You sing about those things that surround you. Our surrounding has always been that of suffering from apartheid and the racism that exists in our country. So our music has to be affected by all that". She announced that she was retiring three years ago, but never really managed to stop performing.