Harry Belafonte & Miriam Makeba - An Evening With Belafonte & Makeba (1965)

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Harry Belafonte & Miriam Makeba - An Evening With Belafonte & Makeba (1965)

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An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba is a Grammy Award-winning 1965 album by Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba. It was the second outcome of the long lasting collaboration between Belafonte and Makeba, the first being the appearance of Makeba in the song Just One More Dance on Belafonte's 1960 album, Belafonte Returns to Carnegie Hall.

Despite the title, just two of the tracks in this album are actually duets, while all the others are either sang by Belafonte or Makeba alone.

In the mid 1960s, Belafonte was very active in supporting emerging African artists as well as making African music known worldwide, and this album is an example of this activity. It includes classical African songs like Malaika (with the english title My Angel) as well as songs in African languages such as Zulu, Sotho and Swahili. –Wikipedia

Record producers often hit the jackpot when they rerelease an ancient classic, and such is emphatically the case with the 37-year-old hit LP An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba. This was an inspired pairing at the time, and feels no less inspired now. Harry Belafonte's career had begun in the theatre, moved on to pop and thence to the archives of folk music; Miriam Makeba had begun her career in South African jazz and moved on to protest music, earning herself the distinction of being one of her country's first famous musical exiles; her work with the American protest movement subsequently earned her a similar accolade from the American authorities. But here they are in their heyday, singing a wonderfully beguiling string of African songs, some of them muted expressions of sadness (the young Kenyan prevented by poverty from marrying his sweetheart), some of oppression ("Hurry mama, hide–the police are on their way"), and some proclaiming the Zulus' determination to fight back. But what strikes you now is the charm with which everything is expressed, and the graceful economy of the accompaniments–sometimes a lone guitar, often a Zulu choir. All comes from the heart, but all is the soul of decorum. –Michael Church

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Harry Belafonte & Miriam Makeba - An Evening With Belafonte & Makeba (1965)

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