New Makeba box set a definitive collector’s item
Unearthed songs, video clips and rare recordings provide full picture
When Miriam Makeba saw her best friends Dolly Rathebe and Nina Simone die with virtually no access to the intellectual property they had created in their lives, she decided to toughen up her business approach. "Makeba was a businesswoman who saw far into the future," says her business affairs manager, Graeme Gilfillan. She launched the Makeba Music Corporation in 1961 in New York and integrated music and business by starting a nightclub in Guinea in the 1970s. And in 2002 Makeba formed the intellectual property trust ZM Makeba Trust and its exclusive licensee Siyandisa Music, with the instructions "to recover all her work". Siyandisa entered into an agreement with Johnnic (Gallo’s parent company) to settle hostilities that started in the 1960s and retrieved her existing albums from the public domain and the record labels. Now, nearly 10 years after her death, her office in Parktown has released her full discography in a box set with several albums and compilations of new music. The ...
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