🔗 Share this article

“If you talk about Miriam Makeba in the nation, it’s similar to talking about a sovereign,” states Alesandra Seutin. Referred to as the Empress of African Song, the iconic artist also associated in Greenwich Village with renowned musicians like Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. Starting as a young person dispatched to labor to support her family in Johannesburg, she later became a diplomat for Ghana, then the country’s official delegate to the United Nations. An vocal campaigner against segregation, she was the wife to a activist. This rich life and legacy inspire Seutin’s latest work, the performance, set for its UK premiere.

The Blend of Dance, Music, and Spoken Word

Mimi’s Shebeen combines dance, live music, and spoken word in a theatrical piece that is not a simple biography but draws on Makeba’s history, especially her story of exile: after relocating to the city in 1959, Makeba was prohibited from South Africa for three decades due to her opposition to segregation. Later, she was excluded from the US after wedding activist her spouse. The show is like a ritual of remembrance, a reimagined memorial – part eulogy, some festivity, some challenge – with a exceptional South African singer the performer leading reviving her music to vibrant life.

Power and poise … Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the country, a shebeen is an under-the-radar venue for locally made drinks and animated discussions, often managed by a host. Makeba’s mother the matriarch was a shebeen queen who was arrested for illegally brewing alcohol when Miriam was 18 days old. Unable to pay the fine, she went to prison for half a year, taking her baby with her, which is how Miriam’s remarkable journey started – just one of the details Seutin discovered when studying Makeba’s life. “Numerous tales!” exclaims she, when we meet in the city after a show. Her father is Belgian and she mainly grew up there before moving to study and work in the UK, where she founded her dance group Vocab Dance. Her parent would sing her music, such as the tunes, when Seutin was a child, and dance to them in the living room.

Melodies of liberation … the artist sings at the venue in 1988.

A ten years back, Seutin’s mother had cancer and was in hospital in London. “I stopped working for three months to take care of her and she was always requesting Miriam Makeba. She was so happy when we were singing together,” she remembers. “There was ample time to pass at the hospital so I started researching.” In addition to learning of her victorious homecoming to the nation in the year, after the release of Nelson Mandela (whom she had met when he was a young lawyer in the era), Seutin found that she had been a breast cancer survivor in her teens, that Makeba’s daughter the girl passed away in childbirth in 1985, and that due to her exile she hadn’t been able to be present at her parent’s memorial. “You see people and you look at their achievements and you overlook that they are struggling like everyone,” states the choreographer.

Development and Themes

All these thoughts went into the creation of the show (first staged in Brussels in 2023). Thankfully, her parent’s therapy was successful, but the idea for the work was to celebrate “loss, existence, and grief”. In this context, she pulls out elements of Makeba’s biography like flashbacks, and nods more broadly to the theme of uprooting and loss today. Although it’s not explicit in the performance, she had in mind a additional character, a contemporary version who is a traveler. “Together, we assemble as these other selves of characters connected to Miriam Makeba to greet this young migrant.”

Melodies of banishment … performers in the show.

In the show, rather than being intoxicated by the shebeen’s home-brew, the multi-talented performers appear taken over by beat, in harmony with the musicians on stage. Her choreography includes multiple styles of dance she has absorbed over the time, including from Rwanda, South Africa and Senegal, plus the global performers’ own vocabularies, including urban dances like the form.

A celebration of resilience … the creator.

Seutin was taken aback to find that some of the newer, international in the group were unaware about the artist. (She passed away in the year after having a heart attack on the platform in Italy.) Why should new audiences discover Mama Africa? “I think she would motivate young people to advocate what they believe in, expressing honesty,” remarks Seutin. “But she accomplished this very gracefully. She’d say something meaningful and then sing a beautiful song.” She wanted to adopt the similar method in this work. “We see movement and hear melodies, an element of entertainment, but mixed with powerful ideas and instances that resonate. That’s what I admire about Miriam. Since if you are shouting too much, people may ignore. They retreat. Yet she did it in a way that you would receive it, and hear it, but still be graced by her ability.”

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