Their marriage lasted two years. Their musical partnership lasted more than four decades. Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela married in 1964, exiles from apartheid South Africa building careers in America.
Johannesburg roots
Makeba and Masekela both came up in Johannesburg’s 1950s jazz scene and worked on the 1959 musical King Kong. That year Makeba left South Africa to tour, and the apartheid government later barred her from returning. Masekela left in 1960 and studied in London and at the Manhattan School of Music in New York, where Makeba helped him settle.
Married in exile
They married in 1964, when Makeba was already a star in America, and divorced in 1966. The breakup did not end the collaboration. Masekela wrote and arranged for her for years, and in 1977 she recorded his “Soweto Blues” about the Soweto uprising. In 1968 his “Grazing in the Grass” topped the US charts, and Makeba married the activist Stokely Carmichael.
Home again
Both returned to South Africa as apartheid ended in the early 1990s and toured together again. Makeba died in Italy in November 2008, shortly after a concert. Masekela died in Johannesburg in January 2018.