Makeba Cries the Beloved Country

South African singer Miriam Makeba was talking about pain the other night--a unique kind of pain.

Makeba, 55, is an enormously respected international figure who is often called the empress of African song. Here for a concert tonight at the Wiltern Theatre, she sat on a couch in the shadows of her dimly lit Hollywood hotel suite--weary from a string of one-nighters and fresh off a plane from Minneapolis--and turned a discussion of the turmoil in South Africa to a commentary on her special pain.

“You get used to this kind of pain when you live with it for so long,” lamented Makeba, a gentle, gracious woman who--at that moment--seemed shrouded in sadness. “No pain matches the pain of not having a country.”

Makeba has been banned from South Africa since 1960. Then a popular folk singer in Europe and America and a vocal opponent of apartheid, she was refused reentry by the South African government when she tried to attend her mother’s funeral.

“The pain of not being able to see my mother buried or not being able to visit her grave--that’s a different kind of pain too,” she added. “I have pictures of her grave. I often look at them. But it’s not the same thing. This kind of pain isn’t always intense but never goes away. It won’t until I see my mother’s grave--when I go home again.”

Makeba says she has been quietly invited to return to her homeland, but she refuses to go back until the apartheid system is gone.

“After 29 years outside my country, why would I go back and let this racist government use me?” she said. “They’re trying to make the world think they’re changing. They would use me as an example that things are getting better. But things are still the same. My people are not free. I’ll go back home but only when my people are free. Then I’ll see my mother’s grave--and not before.

“As long as my people aren’t free I still have no country.”

The current concert tour is just one part of a Makeba revival.

It all started early last year, when Paul Simon invited her to be part of his successful “Graceland” tour, which spotlighted South African artists and music. Fans who hadn’t heard about Makeba since the late ‘60s were interested again.

Her autobiography, “Makeba: My Story” (written with James Hall), recounting the details of her turbulent life, was published in January. At the same time Warner Bros. released “Sangoma,” her first album in seven years.

American pop-rock producer Russ Titelman, who met her at a party when the Simon tour reached New York, talked her into recording “Sangoma,” an album of tribal chants, sung in several different languages.

In a separate interview, Titelman explained why he did the album: “I was a big fan of hers. I loved this one song she sang in the (‘Graceland’) show. When I met her she said her mother taught her these songs. She said she knew hundreds of them.

“I asked her to record them. It only took two weeks, and it didn’t cost much. We used some singers and a few synthesized sounds. I know it’s not commercial. It wasn’t meant to be. It was an opportunity to get these songs on record, the way they’re supposed to be performed.”

Makeba, who had just about given up on recording, said she changed her mind because of the special nature of this project: “This is no ordinary album for me. These are the songs of my childhood, the songs of my mother. I wasn’t recording just to make an album that would sell. I was recording songs that were a part of me.”

Makeba is as renowned for her active role in international politics as she is for her music. Her list of achievements includes serving as a United Nations delegate from Guinea--her home since the late ‘60s--and winning the 1986 Dag Hammarskjold Peace Prize.

Still, she’s best known for her anti-apartheid activities. Ironically, she’d been trying for decades to focus attention on the plight of blacks in South Africa. Until recently, though, Americans seemed disinterested.

Makeba credits the international media focus on South Africa in the last few years with America’s heightened consciousness.

“People in this country finally saw for themselves--on television--how the South African government was treating the blacks,” she said. “It’s finally sinking into American minds. People are listening. I’ve been shouting all these years and no one seemed to be listening. Do you know how good it feels that people are finally listening?”

Throughout her teens, Makeba, who’s from Johannesburg, was a protest singer. In the late ‘50s, she became an American star when an intriguing performance in a documentary, “Come Back, Africa,” impressed celebrities such as Steve Allen and Harry Belafonte. Allen invited her to appear on his old TV variety show. Belafonte became her mentor, adding her to his touring troupe.

Her American career peaked in 1967 with her only pop hit “Pata, Pata.” Her career went downhill, she said, after she married black radical Stokely Carmichael in 1968.

Makeba claimed she was boycotted on the concert circuit: “Shows I had scheduled were canceled. My manager said the reason was that people weren’t going to feed the hand that was going to slap them. They saw my husband as a threat and me as a threat because I was married to him. But I was speaking out against the South African government--as I always did--not the American government.”

Fed up with the hassles here, she and Carmichael moved to Guinea. That marriage, her third, lasted 10 years. Her previous marriage was to South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela, who’s currently touring with her. She’s currently with her fourth husband.

By Makeba’s own admission, her personal life has been woefully unstable. The constant separations necessitated by her traveling damaged her marriages, she said. But she also cited a more insidious factor. Being cut off from her relatives in South Africa, she insisted, has fostered a pervasive insecurity that had undermined her relationships.

“The way I was raised, family ties are so important,” she explained. “I’ve missed that family support, that group support, that cultural support. It’s been a problem all my life. I’ve been trying to make up for it in many ways.

“For some people that doesn’t matter. For me, not having family support has been a source of hurt--of pain.”