The Click Song

This song — properly "Qongqothwane" in Xhosa, a language of the South African Eastern Cape — became internationally known when Makeba performed it at venues across the world and Western audiences encountered for perhaps the first time a music built on phonemic clicks as musical material. The Xhosa click consonants are not decorative; they are fully grammatical, and the song is a traditional wedding preparation melody, a woman calling others to come and sing as the bride readies herself. What Makeba did was carry an entire sonic tradition across a vast cultural gulf and make it land with dignity rather than exoticism. Her voice is bright and clear, the melody pentatonic and dancing, and the rhythm has that particular quality of African music that makes the body want to move before the mind has decided anything. The political context of Makeba's career cannot be separated from the music — she was exiled from South Africa for decades because of her activism, and every performance of Xhosa song was also a refusal to disappear. The clicking sounds that audiences found astonishing were simply the sounds of her language, present and insisting on their own normality.