Mama Africa

Ignore the title. For although Makeba – who died in 2008 aged 76 – richly deserved the ‘Mama Africa’ soubriquet, this 27-track disc is not a career overview. Rather it's a welcome reissue of her first two solo albums, recorded in 1960 after she had sought exile in the US when, still in her 20s, she was Africa's bright-eyed ingénue daughter rather than the continent's ‘earth mother.’ The 14 tracks from the LP Miriam Makeba find her in simple folk vein, accompanied only by Perry Lopez's guitar and the Harry Belafonte Singers. The Zulu and Xhosa folk songs include a stirring version of ‘Mbube (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)’ but her finest vocal performance arguably comes on an extraordinary version of ‘House of the Rising Sun’, magically sung in a voice that combines the elegant purity of Joan Baez with the deep soul of Nina Simone. The dozen tracks from the LP The Many Voices of Miriam Makeba combine the same folk simplicity with a small jazz combo that includes Hugh Masekela on trumpet, and more expansive material that includes a Congolese lament, a Brazilian carnival song and a West Indian calypso. As a bonus we get the first version of ‘Pata Pata’, recorded in 1959 as a gentle swaying township folk song rather than the upbeat global dance tune it was to become in 1967. Makeba's later recordings may have reflected more deeply on the pain and suffering of apartheid and exile, but she never sounded more exquisitely charming and innocently irresistible than she does here.