In 1977, millions of Americans watched Roots, the television series about slavery. Among the voices on its soundtrack was a South African woman singing in her own language. She was Letta Mbulu, an exile from Soweto.
Soweto and King Kong
Letta Mbulu grew up in Soweto. As a teenager, she toured with King Kong, the famous South African musical that also featured Miriam Makeba. The show gave her experience and exposure.
Leaving
Apartheid made life and work increasingly difficult for Black musicians in South Africa. Mbulu left in the mid-1960s and arrived in the United States in 1965.
In New York, she joined a community of South African exiles, including Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela and Jonas Gwangwa, who were building careers abroad and speaking out against apartheid.
American career
Mbulu worked with jazz and popular musicians including Cannonball Adderley, David Axelrod and Harry Belafonte. She recorded her own albums, mixing South African melodies with jazz, soul and funk.
Caiphus Semenya
She married the South African composer Caiphus Semenya, who became her musical partner. Semenya wrote and arranged many of her songs.
Roots
Quincy Jones, the composer and producer, brought Mbulu into his music for Roots in 1977. She is best remembered on the soundtrack for singing “Oluwa”, written by Semenya. Her voice gave the soundtrack a direct connection to Africa.
Other work
Mbulu and Semenya also contributed to other films and projects, including music for The Color Purple, which Quincy Jones co-produced.
Her own albums
Mbulu’s albums from her American years mixed jazz, soul and funk with South African rhythms and languages. Some of these records, rare for decades, were later reissued and found new fans among collectors and DJs.
Singing in her own language
Mbulu often sang in her own languages even in America, at a time when many producers wanted English songs. That choice made her recordings a voice of South Africa abroad.
Coming home
As apartheid began to end, Mbulu and Semenya returned to South Africa in 1991, after more than two decades abroad. She continued to perform and record, and she is honoured as one of the great voices of South African music.
A voice from exile
For years, South African radio could not freely play the exiled musicians who spoke against apartheid. American television audiences heard Letta Mbulu before many of her own people could, and she came home to a country that finally could listen.
