Today’s Good News: Honoring Terkel and Makeba
It always seems that near the end of the year, there are more obituaries, more times when you turn on the radio and hear a certain artist over and over and think “Oh no…” Here are two giants who really made a mark: Studs Terkel and Miriam Makeba. Chicago being one of my hometowns, I lwas proud of Terkel and felt he was one of the city’s finest products (and it has produced and inspired many great writers). To honor him, I picked up a copy of one of his most recent books, Hope Dies Last. Talk about heroes. I was moved to tears by his interview with Dennis Kucinich, who fought to keep Cleveland’s utility company in public hands in the 70’s. He lost his job as mayor, but saved the power for the people. 14 years later he was returned to office, the only Democrat sent to DC from Ohio in 1994, with the slogan: Because he was right. (Tell me again why you’d rather vote for Barack Obama?) Anyway. Studs also influenced me in college back in the 70’s, when I read Working - it helped form my belief in the dignity of all kinds of work.
FAIR’s Jeff Cohen said it best: “With his legacy of best-selling books and historic recorded interviews, Studs will no more be silenced by death than Wobbly songwriter Joe Hill was by a Utah firing squad. If Howard Zinn wrote A People’s History, Studs developed “A People’s Journalism” – putting the stories and wisdom of poor and working class Americans [among others] on tape and the printed page.” (Read Cohen’s whole commentary here.)
I didn’t know much about Miriam Makeba back in 1988. I was home sick one weekend and decided to rent some music movies. I watched a movie of Paul Simon’s “Graceland” tour and, while I’ve been a fan of Simon’s all my life, what knocked me on my ass that day was Makeba. She impressed me more than almost any artist I’ve heard on the first listen.
Known as the “Empress of African song,” she grew up in South Africa, but she and even her records were banned there after she spoke out against the Sharpsville massacre and the apartheid system in the 60s. Her third husband was Hugh Masekela; her fourth was Stokely Carmichael. While some supporters of the apartheid boycott criticized Paul Simon for not conferring with exile groups before hiring South African musicians for “Graceland,” Makeba and Masekela gave him full support, because they felt the project brought important issues into general discussion and made cultural activity even more potent. Like Studs and Joe Hill, she won’t be silenced; her work lives on.
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