Celebrating Miriam Makeba: A Journey of a Courageous Artist Told in a Daring Theatrical Performance

“If you talk about the legendary singer in South Africa, it’s akin to referring about a sovereign,” remarks the choreographer. Referred to as the Empress of African Song, 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 the city, she later became a diplomat for Ghana, then Guinea’s official delegate to the United Nations. An vocal campaigner against segregation, she was married to a Black Panther. This remarkable life and legacy inspire Seutin’s new production, the performance, scheduled for its UK premiere.

A Fusion of Dance, Music, and Spoken Word

The show combines dance, instrumental performances, and spoken word in a theatrical piece that is not a straightforward biodrama but draws on her past, particularly her story of exile: after relocating to the city in 1959, she was barred from South Africa 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 ritual of remembrance, a deconstructed funeral – part eulogy, part celebration, part provocation – with a exceptional vocalist Tutu Puoane at the centre reviving Makeba’s songs to dynamic existence.

Strength and elegance … the production.

In the country, a shebeen is an unofficial venue for home-brewed liquor and animated discussions, often managed by a shebeen queen. Her parent the matriarch was a proprietress who was detained for illegally brewing alcohol when Miriam was a newborn. Unable to pay the penalty, Christina went to prison for half a year, bringing her baby with her, which is how Miriam’s eventful life started – just one of the things the choreographer discovered when researching Makeba’s life. “Numerous tales!” exclaims she, when they met in Brussels after a performance. Her parent is Belgian and she was raised there before moving to learn and labor in the United Kingdom, where she founded her company the ensemble. Her South African mother would sing her music, such as the tunes, when Seutin was a child, and move along in the home.

Melodies of liberation … the artist sings at Wembley Stadium in the year.

A decade ago, her parent had the illness and was in medical care in the city. “I paused my career for three months to take care of her and she was always requesting the singer. She was so happy when we were performing as one,” Seutin remembers. “I had so much time to kill at the hospital so I started researching.” As well as reading about Makeba’s triumphant return to the nation in the year, after the freedom of Nelson Mandela (whom she had met when he was a young lawyer in the 1950s), she found that she had been a breast cancer survivor in her youth, that her child Bongi died in childbirth in 1985, and that due to her banishment she could not be present at her parent’s memorial. “You see people and you look at their achievements and you forget that they are struggling like anyone else,” states Seutin.

Development and Themes

All these thoughts contributed to the creation of the show (premiered in the city in 2023). Thankfully, Seutin’s mother’s therapy was effective, but the idea for the work was to honor “loss, existence, and grief”. In this context, Seutin pulls out threads of Makeba’s biography like flashbacks, and nods more broadly to the theme of uprooting and loss today. Although it’s not overt in the show, Seutin had in mind a additional character, a contemporary version who is a traveler. “And we gather as these alter egos of personas connected to Miriam Makeba to greet this newcomer.”

Rhythms of exile … musicians in the show.

In the show, rather than being inebriated by the shebeen’s home-brew, the skilled dancers appear taken over by rhythm, in harmony with the players on stage. Her dance composition includes various forms of dance she has absorbed over the years, including from Rwanda, South Africa and Senegal, plus the global performers’ personal styles, including urban dances like krump.

Honoring strength … the creator.

Seutin was surprised to find that some of the newer, international in the cast didn’t already know about the singer. (Makeba passed away in 2008 after having a cardiac event on stage in Italy.) Why should new audiences learn about the legend? “In my view she would motivate young people to stand for what they are, speaking the truth,” remarks the choreographer. “However she accomplished this very elegantly. She’d say something poignant and then perform a lovely melody.” Seutin wanted to take the similar method in this production. “Audiences observe dancing and hear beautiful songs, an element of entertainment, but mixed with powerful ideas and instances that resonate. This is what I admire about Miriam. Because if you are shouting too much, people may ignore. They back away. Yet she achieved it in a manner that you would receive it, and hear it, but still be graced by her talent.”

• Mimi’s Shebeen is showing in the city, 22-24 October