Miriam Makeba - Pata Pata
(download)
The only time I watch commercials anymore is when I forget to fast forward through them. So you can imagine my surprise when I finally snap to the realization that one is on, and Mama Africa's music was in it.
Makeba was among the most talented female vocalists during that format's heyday in the early 60s. She never got as much play as many of her contemporaries, owing partly to the fact that the strong African music influence in a lot of her work simply wasn't popular; the other part is that we still didn't have civil rights here and Africans make white America wet their diapers. What is extra excellent about her - and the reason I learned about her in the first place - was that she was a badass. Her anti-apartheid work got her banned from her home, South Africa, for some 30 years (that wasn't too huge a problem, since plenty of other countries lined up to take her with open arms). She had a spot on the Graceland tour. She beat cancer. And by the time of her death 2 years ago, she'd even been sent to represent Guinea at the UN. Boom.