Miriam Makeba Quotes

Everywhere I performed in Brazil, I never saw black people. I only performed to white people. And they (the white people) said it's because they (the black people) can't afford to come here - it's too expensive. That is another form of keeping them from coming to where they can enjoy themselves together with white people. They keep them poor.

The white man, where ever he is, whether he is in the majority or the minority, he rules. It just proves to everyone that we have to keep fighting.

We don't write our history. It has always been handed down to us orally by our elders.

The conquerer writes history. They came, they conquered and they wrote. Now, you don't expect people who invaded us to write the truth about us. They will always write negative things about us. And they have to do that because they have to justify their invasions in all the countries.

I didn’t have much, but I was always happy to share what I did have. It seemed like every African that came to New York City would show up at my apartment door at dinnertime, and I couldn’t turn them away. I wasn’t much older than any of them, but they started calling me ‘Mama Africa’ and the name stuck.

In those years, when I came to the States, people were always asking me why I didn’t sing anymore. I’d tell them, ‘I sing all around the world—Asia, Africa, Europe—but if you don’t sing in the US, then you haven’t really made it.’ That’s why I’ll always be grateful to Paul Simon. He allowed me to bring my music back to my friends in this country.

My concerts were canceled left and right. Speaking about South African Apartheid was fine, but they were suddenly afraid I might speak about American Apartheid, although I never did. Bookers told me that my shows would finance radical activities and [Reprise Records] told me they were not going to honor my recording contract. I didn’t say anything, but if I was married to a troublemaker, I must be a troublemaker. I’d already lived in exile for 10 years, and the world is free, even if some of the countries in it aren’t, so I packed my bags and left.

When I was young, I never bought records because my brother Joseph played saxophone and had a record player. I loved listening to his records: The Dorsey Brothers, Duke Ellington, all the big American jazz bands, and vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald, Ernestine Anderson, and Kitty White, a singer from the US who was a friend of Nina Simone. Nobody in America seems to know about her, but she was quite popular in South Africa.

I will probably die singing.<ref name="poet2009">

I always wanted to leave home. I never knew they were going to stop me from coming back. Maybe, if I knew, I never would have left. It is kind of painful to be away from everything that you've ever know. Nobody will know the pain of exile until you are in exile. No matter where you go, there are times when people show you kindness and love, and there are times when they make you know that you are with them but not of them. That's when it hurts.<ref name="Bordowitz">

African music, though very old, is always being rediscovered in the West.