Currently Listening To (2019)............

I quite agree. Life would be very boring if we all liked the same thing.

I like a variety of music from Classical, Blues, Jazz, Folk, Rock, Pop, and a whole variety of ethnic music.

There are many reasons why people like different music and, quite often, it's because it reminds them of a particular event (or girl or boy).

One of the ethnic songs that has stuck in my mind is Qongqothwane (more commonly known as the Click Song because of the clicking sound made in the throat whilst singing). I first heard it at a wedding in South Africa in 1962 - it's a traditional good luck wedding song. I got in to trouble for going to the wedding because of apartheid but the best man worked with me and I was invited.



Miriam Makeba made the song famous, world wide, and was exiled from S. Africa because of her fight against apartheid.

She also sang in many languages with songs that were traditional folk from many countries, songs from shows, classical and a lot of songs about rights and wrongs.



You'll notice that her English accent had improved between the times of making the recordings. She was a protégé of Harry Belafonte and did many tours with him and made a lot of records with him.

She was eventually given her citizenship back by Nelson Mandela.

 

@wiseowl if I remember correctly, Ruby Murray had five top twenty hits in the same week.

 

@Snorky85
Before going to the wedding

 

I heard this on the radio earlier on - by The Pogues with Kirsty McColl.



Kirsty was tragically killed by a powerboat when she and her two sons were swimming in a no boat area. She pushed her son out of the way and she was killed instantly. It was a travesty of justice with regards to the investigation of her death and the BBC showed a programme 'Who Killed Kirsty MacColl?'. Justice was eventually served (more or less!)

Kirsty's first big hit was this song that she wrote



She was the daughter of Ewan MacColl who wrote this song to his wife Peggy Seeger



Peggy was also a singer songwriter who wrote and performed many songs. She is the half sister of Pete Seeger, one of the most famous folk singers for five decades

He wrote many famous songs including this sung by Joan Baez



She also, famously, sang one of his other songs "We Shall Overcome" in August 1963and led a crowd of 300,000 singing it at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington.

President Johnson, a Southerner himself, used the phrase "We shall overcome" in his speech to Congress on March 15, 1965, when demanding voting rights for Afro-Americans after the "Bloody Sunday" attacks during the Selma to Montgomery marches.

Martin Luther King recited parts of "We Shall Overcome" at his final sermon Sunday March 31, 1968, shortly before his assassination, and sung by thousands at his funeral.

It was sung by Senator Robert Kennedy, when in 1966 leading anti-apartheid crowds' choruses from the rooftop of his car in South Africa, which resulted in the song becoming an anthem of the anti apartheid movement.