Talk:Miriam Makeba

Suggestion for Earlier Picture
I was thinking that since Miriam Makeba is dead, often Wikipedia has an older main picture of that person, so in other words when that person was younger. Of course there are exceptions like for example Mother Teresa who was more relevant in her older years. But I think in this case Miriam Makeba achieved considerable fame in the 1960s, so it would be nice if the main picture was from around that time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.115.201.50 (talk) 19:10, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

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External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100707115254/http://www.barbican.org.uk/music/event-detail.asp?ID=9760 to http://www.barbican.org.uk/music/event-detail.asp?ID=9760

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TFAR
Today's featured article/requests/Miriam Makeba --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:55, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

"text questions"
The answers to your questions are "no" and "no"; I don't see how that was in doubt, though. Vanamonde (talk) 15:54, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Pata Pata
Interesting ref from the "Pata Pata" article, which means we might need to change a few things here:

I have access to that ref, but I can't get to the Ravell-Pinto refernce on the Miriam Makeba page, which mentions that a disagreement happened between Makeba and Belafonte during the recording of "Pata Pata" (which seems rather unlikely in light of the Allingham ref). , could you help out here? I probably won't be able to do more on this tonight (my time). Graham 87 13:37, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
 * On it, but I'm a bit busy at the moment, it might take me a day or so. Vanamonde (talk) 14:32, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Were's Sivuca?
Please, sorry my bad English... So... After 1964, her musical director (and musician in tours) does Sivuca. This article forgot him! References: André Koehne (talk) 10:35, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * 1) L.A. Times
 * 2) Folha de S.Paulo (in portuguese)

Bessie Head
Given that a scholarly source mentioned this incident, it's quite possibly worth including, but I'm uncomfortable with the way in which it's currently mentioned. It doesn't have a coherent link to the content before or after it, nor does it make it clear that Makeba's prejudice was about Head being too white, not too black (which is a reasonable interpretation). Vanamonde (Talk) 23:26, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah as you can tell from my edit summaries, I was also a bit dubious about this new paragraph. There's also another possible piece of context: in the Google Books excerpt I can see it talks about Makeba's first husband being coloured and how his family allegedly treated her. Of course, we can't use that book directly as a source for all that. There's also the matter of the fact we're only hearing one side of the story ... perhaps Makeba responded to Head's allegations somewhere. Due to Wikipedia's extreme prominence and the very surprising nature of the allegations, I now think it's better to not have them in at all than to have them in there with the wrong or no context. Therefore despite me being up most of last night chasing these allegations down, I've gone and removed them. Graham 87 04:24, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, much appreciated. I haven't had the time I would want to do any digging. In the absence of further detail, I think this is best kept out at the moment. Even if we are discussing this as prejudice on Makeba's part, we need to know if it was disdain for people with white heritage; prejudice against coloured people specifically; or something else, and at the moment, we don't have that. Vanamonde (Talk) 18:01, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Black Panther leader Stokely Carmichael
I don't recall Carmichael being a Black Panther, much less a leader. He was, I believe, a member of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) until he embraced violent revolution. Curious Chicano (talk) 05:19, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
 * He was affiliated with the Black Panther party, including in leadership positions, for a period between his work with the SNCC and his move to Guinea. Our article about him has the details. Vanamonde (Talk) 06:27, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History article
While trying to make clarifications in response to this edit, I discovered that there's a very comprehensive and apparently recent article about Makeba in the online Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. It's available to anyone who can access The Wikipedia Library using the Oxford Research Encyclopedias page. I used it to straighten out her childhood but there's probably more that can be done with it if I or someone else feels inclined. In particular, I don't know if the car accident she went through as a passenger (in which she was physically unharmed) needs a mention; this is the first source I've had access to that describes it comprehensively. There might be other things from her adult life that could be added at some point, both at this article and that of her daughter Bongi. I removed the bit from this page about her saying she was shy, as I couldn't find a way to make it flow well with the rewritten text; the cited ref (the Economist obituary) just mentioned that she said this to an unnamed reporter and didn't really give a timeframe. I hope I haven't messed anything up ... feel free to make any further corrections necessary. Graham 87 13:10, 4 April 2023 (UTC)


 * A very useful article, thanks for pointing me to it. I was pleased to see at least a few instances where I read a detail, came here to add it, and found we already had; but there's also a decent amount of detail we could use. It's also a comprehensive source review, as best as I can tell, and I'm going to look up at least a couple of sources it lists. Please feel free to tweak anything I've added thus far. Vanamonde (Talk) 04:47, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
 * A fair point, Graham...I suspect on review it's better to have the loc parameter, but I was lazy yesterday. I can work through adding them later. Vanamonde (Talk) 16:45, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
 * No worries; I got them all, I think. I was wondering why the footnote numbers in the recent text were so high even though the ref was already used. I was using copy and paste to make the references when I made my recent edits. Graham 87 04:30, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Pronunciation
Why is her last name pronounced like its an English name? What is mə-KAY-bə? They even capitalised "KAY." This is a Featured Article and it must be accurate. There's definitely no hard "K" in Makeba and most of South African names. I am gonna remove the IPA for the time being until consensus is reached.  dxneo  (talk) 19:21, 26 June 2024 (UTC)


 * On this video, South African musical group, Bongo Muffin, pronounced "Makeba" at 49:24 – 49:40. Please listen.  dxneo  (talk) 19:40, 26 June 2024 (UTC)