By K. Curtis Lyle For The St. Louis American
Thursday, November 13, 2008 7:28 AM CST

The word charisma, in the popular imagination, is most often attached to the idea of leadership. It’s an inner light growing out of a strong personality that inspires political allegiance and sometimes even personal devotion. For the true artist, there is also the hint of prophecy and healing attached to charisma.

Miriam Zenzile Makeba had charisma. She was the ruler of African song beyond style, generation, approach or historical definition. She died in Italy, at midnight November 10, 2008. She collapsed as she was leaving the stage at the end of a concert. She went out on her shield!

True to her lifelong commitment to art as activism, she was performing outside Naples in protest against the recent murders of six Ghanaian immigrants and organized-crime death threats against Italian investigative journalist Roberto Saviano, whose groundbreaking book, Gomorrah, shines an unyielding light on the violent local, national and international workings of the Neapolitan mafia.

At 76, she still had the heart to remain a visible opponent of oppression by government or gang.

Miriam Makeba was born March 4, 1932 in a township suburb of Johannesburg. Her father was Xhosa and worked as a clerk for Shell Oil. Her mother was a Swazi spiritual healer. Miriam gave birth to her daughter Bongi at 17 and was diagnosed with breast cancer, which her mother treated successfully with spiritual healing practice. Her middle name Zenzile (from the Xhosa “Uzenzile,” meaning “you have no one to blame but yourself”) was a traditional name meant to steel the spirit against the burdens of life.

She began singing professionally and getting noticed in the 1950s with The Cubans and The Manhattans. Their forte was harmony singing, created from the combined influence of traditional music, jazz and Anglican Church hymnody. This led to the popular style mbube, practiced in folk communities as night choirs, modeled on the American groups The Mills Brothers and The Ink Spots.

After South African success in the musical King Kong, about the life of a legendary boxer, she found international success with the film Come Back Africa. She was invited to a screening at the Venice Film Festival and became an instant celebrity. She was brought to New York, where she appeared on American television and played at the Village Vanguard.

Her star continued to rise when she met Harry Belafonte. The calypso craze had taken the U.S. by storm from the middle to late ‘50s, and Belafonte was its acknowledged center. Through him her performing, recording and celebrity dreams continued to unfold at break neckspeed. Meetings with the likes of Bing Crosby and Marlon Brando were culminated when she appeared with Marilyn Monroe at the famous Madison Square Garden birthday celebration for John Kennedy.

The Republic of South Africa in her time was the quintessential oppressive state. Its doctrine of apartheid set it apart in world affairs. She never forgot that. Consequently, her life included not just art and fame, but also activism. She became a spokesperson for the oppressed everywhere. Because she was a woman, because she was black, because she was visible, because her voice and her word carried a kind of magic and because she was charismatic Zenzile, she worked tirelessly to give her cause a public forum.

In 1962 she addressed the U. N. Special Committee on Apartheid. South Africa reciprocated by banning her records. She was the only performer invited by Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I to perform in Addis Ababa at the inauguration of the Organization of African Unity. In 1965 she performed in Algeria and at the OAU conference in Accra, Ghana.

In 1965 she also married trumpeter Hugh Masekela, another South African artist in exile and a relentless foe of the apartheid regime. As her art increasingly became identified with anti-apartheid, anti-colonial and revolutionary politics, she became more controversial in her associations and less palatable to white middle-class audiences.

In 1967 her politically charged art met black power in the person of Black Panther leader Stokely Carmichael. Her marriage to Carmichael basically ended her American career. As Marcus Garvey once said, “Beware of the good pilgrim; he will not kill you, he will ruin your reputation.” All her bookings were cancelled in the west, and she became persona non grata in the entertainment world. She and Carmichael n now Kwame Toure n were given sanctuary by Guinean president Sekou Toure.

She continued to travel and perform worldwide until 1990. After 30 years in exile, she returned to South Africa amidst the euphoria leading up to Nelson Mandela’s release from prison. Mama Africa had come home.

I met her once in New York at a friend’s apartment. She wasn’t well. Her body had opened itself to the beginnings of osteoarthritis.

Her eyes, however, were incredibly alert, in that charismatic sense of one who has been gifted with grace and is able to inspire, heal and prophesy.

Amen.