Remembering Mama Africa: The Journey of a Courageous Artist Portrayed in a Bold Theatrical Performance

“If you talk about Miriam Makeba in South Africa, it’s akin to referring about a queen,” states the choreographer. Called Mama Africa, Makeba also spent time in New York with jazz greats like Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. Starting as a young person sent to work to support her family in Johannesburg, she later served as an envoy for Ghana, then the country’s representative to the UN. An vocal campaigner against segregation, she was the wife to a activist. This remarkable life and legacy inspire the choreographer’s new production, the performance, scheduled for its UK premiere.

A Fusion of Movement, Sound, and Narration

The show merges dance, live music, and oral storytelling in a theatrical piece that is not a simple biography but draws on Makeba’s history, especially her experience of banishment: after moving to New York in 1959, she was prohibited from her homeland for three decades due to her opposition to segregation. Later, she was excluded from the United States after wedding Black Panther activist her spouse. The show is like a ceremonial tribute, a reimagined memorial – part eulogy, some festivity, part provocation – with a exceptional South African singer Tutu Puoane leading reviving her music to dynamic existence.

Strength and elegance … Mimi’s Shebeen.

In South Africa, a informal gathering spot is an unofficial gathering place for home-brewed liquor and lively conversation, usually presided over by a host. Her parent the matriarch was a proprietress who was detained for illegally brewing alcohol when Miriam was a newborn. Unable to pay the fine, Christina was incarcerated for six months, taking her infant with her, which is how Miriam’s eventful life began – just one of the details the choreographer learned when studying Makeba’s life. “So many stories!” says she, when they met in the city after a performance. Seutin’s parent is from Belgium and she mainly grew up there before relocating to learn and labor in the United Kingdom, where she founded her dance group Vocab Dance. Her parent would perform Makeba’s songs, such as Pata Pata and Malaika, when she was a child, and dance to them in the living room.

Songs of freedom … the artist sings at the venue in 1988.

A ten years back, Seutin’s mother had the illness and was in medical care in the city. “I paused my career for three months to look after her and she was constantly asking for Miriam Makeba. It delighted her when we were performing as one,” Seutin recalls. “I had so much time to kill at the hospital so I started researching.” As well as learning of her victorious homecoming to South Africa in 1990, after the release of the leader (whom she had met when he was a young lawyer in the era), she found that Makeba had been a someone who overcame illness in her teens, that her child Bongi died in labor in 1985, and that due to her exile she hadn’t been able to be present at her own mother’s funeral. “Observing individuals and you focus on their achievements and you overlook that they are facing challenges like anyone else,” says the choreographer.

Development and Themes

All these thoughts contributed to the creation of the production (premiered in Brussels in the year). Fortunately, Seutin’s mother’s treatment was successful, but the concept for the work was to celebrate “death, life and mourning”. Within that, Seutin pulls out threads of Makeba’s biography like flashbacks, and references more broadly to the theme of displacement and dispossession nowadays. While it’s not overt in the performance, she had in mind a second protagonist, a modern-day Miriam who is a traveler. “And we gather as these other selves of characters linked with the icon to greet this newcomer.”

Rhythms of exile … performers in the show.

In the show, rather than being intoxicated by the shebeen’s local drink, the skilled performers appear possessed by rhythm, in synthesis with the players on the platform. Her choreography incorporates various forms of dance she has absorbed over the years, including from African nations, plus the global performers’ personal styles, including street styles like the form.

A celebration of resilience … the creator.

Seutin was surprised to find that some of the younger, non-South Africans in the cast didn’t already know about the singer. (She passed away in the year after having a heart attack on the platform in the country.) Why should new audiences discover Mama Africa? “I think she would motivate young people to stand for what they believe in, speaking the truth,” remarks the choreographer. “But she accomplished this very elegantly. She expressed something meaningful and then sing a lovely melody.” She wanted to take the same approach in this work. “We see movement and listen to beautiful songs, an aspect of enjoyment, but mixed with powerful ideas and moments that resonate. That’s what I respect about Miriam. Because if you are shouting too much, people may ignore. They retreat. But she achieved it in a manner that you would receive it, and understand it, but still be graced by her talent.”

• The performance is at London, the dates