Celebrating Mama Africa: The Struggle of a Courageous Artist Portrayed in a Daring Theatrical Performance

“Discussing about Miriam Makeba in the nation, it’s like speaking about a sovereign,” remarks Alesandra Seutin. Called Mama Africa, the iconic artist also spent time in Greenwich Village with jazz greats like Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. Starting as a young person dispatched to labor to support her family in Johannesburg, she eventually became a diplomat for the nation, then Guinea’s representative to the UN. An vocal anti-apartheid activist, she was the wife to a activist. This rich story and impact inspire the choreographer’s new production, Mimi’s Shebeen, scheduled for its UK premiere.

The Fusion of Dance, Music, and Spoken Word

The show merges movement, instrumental performances, and spoken word in a theatrical piece that isn’t a simple biography but draws on her past, particularly her experience of banishment: after moving to the city in the year, Makeba was barred from South Africa for 30 years due to her opposition to segregation. Later, she was banned from the US after marrying Black Panther activist Stokely Carmichael. The show resembles a ritual of remembrance, a deconstructed funeral – some praise, some festivity, part provocation – with the exceptional vocalist the performer at the centre reviving her music to dynamic existence.

Strength and elegance … the production.

In the country, a shebeen is an under-the-radar gathering place for locally made drinks and lively conversation, usually presided over by a shebeen queen. Makeba’s mother the matriarch was a proprietress who was arrested for producing drinks without permission when Makeba was a newborn. Incapable of covering the penalty, she was incarcerated for half a year, bringing her baby with her, which is how Miriam’s remarkable journey started – just one of the things Seutin learned when researching Makeba’s life. “So many stories!” says she, when we meet in Brussels after a show. Seutin’s father is Belgian and she mainly grew up there before moving to study and work in the United Kingdom, where she founded her company the ensemble. Her South African mother would perform Makeba’s songs, such as Pata Pata and Malaika, when she was a child, and move along in the home.

Melodies of liberation … Miriam Makeba performs at Wembley Stadium in the year.

A ten years back, Seutin’s mother had cancer and was in hospital in the city. “I paused my career for three months to look after her and she was constantly requesting Miriam Makeba. She was so happy when we were performing as one,” she recalls. “There was ample time to pass at the facility so I started researching.” As well as reading about her victorious homecoming to South Africa in 1990, after the freedom of the leader (whom she had encountered when he was a legal professional in the era), she discovered that she had been a breast cancer survivor in her teens, that Makeba’s daughter Bongi passed away in labor in the year, and that due to her banishment she hadn’t been able to attend her parent’s memorial. “You see people and you look at their achievements and you forget that they are facing challenges like anyone else,” says Seutin.

Development and Concepts

All these thoughts went into the making of the show (first staged in the city in 2023). Thankfully, her parent’s treatment was effective, but the idea for the piece was to honor “loss, existence, and grief”. Within that, Seutin pulls out threads of her life story like memories, and nods more generally to the idea of displacement and dispossession nowadays. While it’s not overt in the performance, she had in mind a additional character, a modern-day Miriam who is a migrant. “Together, we assemble as these alter egos of personas connected to Miriam Makeba to greet this young migrant.”

Rhythms of exile … musicians in Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the show, rather than being inebriated by the venue’s local drink, the multi-talented dancers appear possessed by rhythm, in synthesis with the players on stage. Seutin’s dance composition includes multiple styles of movement she has learned over the years, including from African nations, plus the global performers’ personal styles, including urban dances like the form.

Honoring strength … Alesandra Seutin.

Seutin was surprised to find that some of the younger, non-South Africans in the cast were unaware about the singer. (Makeba died in the year after having a cardiac event on stage in Italy.) Why should younger generations learn about Mama Africa? “I think she would inspire the youth to stand for what they are, expressing honesty,” says Seutin. “However she accomplished this very elegantly. She expressed something meaningful and then perform a lovely melody.” She wanted to adopt the similar method in this work. “Audiences observe dancing and hear melodies, an element of enjoyment, but intertwined with powerful ideas and instances that hit. That’s what I respect about her. Since if you are shouting too much, people won’t listen. They retreat. But she did it in a way that you would accept it, and understand it, but still be blessed by her talent.”

• The performance is showing in London, 22-24 October