Playing the backbeat in Conakry: Miriam Makeba and the cultural politics of Sékou Touré’s Guinea, 1968–1986

Abstract

This article revisits the cultural history of Guinea in the three decades following independence through focusing on the musical activity of Miriam Makeba, the exiled South African singer who resided in the country between the years 1968 and 1986. Recent scholarship has illuminated the vast investment of the Guinean state in developing modern national culture as part of the process of decolonisation as well as the limited freedom of expression, imposed by the state, that subjugated local cultural production. While these studies have concentrated primarily on Guinean cultural agents, this paper explores transnational dimensions within the cultural politics of Guinea. It highlights Makeba's emplacement in Guinea in the context of nation building, Pan-Africanism, cold war politics and black transnational cultural exchanges. By focusing on the disparity between textual sources and musically embedded meanings extracted from Makeba's music recorded in Guinea, this paper recasts Makeba as a conduit of African-American musical influences in the Guinean scene. By doing so, it uncovers cultural spaces that were not subordinated to official state ideology mediated through print culture, and thus have hitherto been unrecognised in mainstream historiography.This study focuses on a relatively unknown chapter in the musical career of the South African singer Miriam Makeba. I concentrate on her musical activity in the West African country of Guinea that became her home and where she worked between 1968 and 1986. Although Makeba has been the subject of academic scrutiny in recent years, research into her work has focused mainly on her time in the United States and has thus been limited to the North American context. Research has investigated, for example, her role in the US civil rights movement within a more encompassing framework of black cultural activism (Feldstein 2013;Fleming 2016); the manner in which she came to represent the African "other" in the United States (Sizemore-Barber 2012); as well as her role in promoting resistance to the apartheid regime (Weaver 2013). Makeba's career in Guinea, however, has not yet been the focus of sustained research. On the other hand, scholarship on Guinean music has focused primarily on Guinean-born musicians and on the state cultural apparatus, and

Fashioning Resistance: The Unsung Fashions of Miriam ‘Mama Africa’ Makeba

“…The 1970s also entailed an oeuvre of politically motivated songs which included her daughter as songwriter for some of her well-known offerings. Her Guinean music career is documented by Hashachar (2017). Music from this period includes songs which focused on the Guinean political milieu, such as Maobhe Guinée (1970) and Touré Barika (1972).…”

Guinea Unbound: Performing Pan-African Cultural Citizenship between Algiers 1969 and the Guinean National Festivals

“…Such emplacements enable a revision of 'the histories of nation-states other than South Africa' (ibid.). Previously, Makeba's involvement with the Guinean music scene had served to reexamine the boundaries of Guinean cultural policy with respect to foreign musical expression (Hashachar 2017).…”

“…An interview with her was published in the festival's official bulletin a few 16 Elsewhere I examined a similar dynamic in relation to Makeba's ability to express musical styles that were not fully conformed to the official ideological line of the Guinean state. See Hashachar (2017). 17 In the Guinean cultural system, 'orchestre moderne' refers to a band that plays primarily on Western instruments as opposed to 'ensemble instrumental' which designates groups that play traditional or neo-traditional music using African instruments.…”