Dreaming Zenzile

[Singing in foreign language] Dreaming Zenzile is a musical about the South African singer Miriam Makeba.

[Singing in foreign language] My name is Somi Kakoma.

I am a vocalist, songwriter, playwright and performer.

Miriam Makeba, when I think about who she is to me, I think about her as an original space maker, right?

She was the first African artist to show up on the global cultural stage in the 1950s, 1960s.

[Singing in foreign language] She's somebody who represented not only the continent, but was open to singing all kinds of music from all kinds of cultural context.

I was always aware of her.

Her voice was always, in some ways, a part of my own soundtrack, right?

And once I started to actually research, that's when I realized the story I did not know.

Not only was she in exile for 31 years, which most of us know, not only were she confronting the devastation and the horror of apartheid, but when she married Stokely Carmichael in the 1960s, she was blacklisted and her career was completely taken away from her in the United States.

One of the things that she means to me is that she made room so that I might be so that I might actually have a voice in these spaces and these cultural spaces.

And so that I might be understood, perhaps in more nuanced ways, than she probably was when she first arrived in the West.

[Singing in foreign language] As an East African woman.

As a first generation American, as somebody who's influenced deeply by jazz and by all kinds of African musics.

She really gave me a certain type of permission and agency in my own work.

And so I've made an album, which is called Zenzile: The Reimagination of Miriam Makeba.

And I wrote a musical.

It allows us to step into the world of Miriam Makeba.

So good to see you all of you dancing out here.

I know it is because you love this old girl.

I started the research for Dreaming Zenzile in January of 2015.

[Singing in foreign language] I feel like that was the beginning of a kind of conversation with her legacy, with her spirit and my wanting to understand more about who she was and understand why she was not remembered in the way that she deserves.

I'm really excited about, you know, to be able to stretch in that way as a writer, as a performer, as a vocalist to have the honor of playing Mama Miriam.

The play demands that I try to embody her, her voice, her body, her language, her gestures, her sensuality, her ferocity, like that's what I'm reaching for.

[Singing in foreign language] The play is called Dreaming Zenzile, because I began to dream about Miriam Makeba at a time when I was going through immense personal loss and really trying to find a way forward.

Those dreams help me to locate my own kind of footing, right and way forward.

Dreaming Zenzile takes place on the last performance of her life, right, which ended up being the last night of her life and in real life, as some might know, she finished the concert, walked into the wings and then had a fatal heart attack.

And I remember thinking when I first found out about how she died, I remember thinking, What a beautiful death.

What a beautiful way to leave this plane.

You know, when you think about Miriam Makeba's music, you don't think about melancholy, you don't think about all the sad tunes, you think about joy.

You might think about ferocity, right?

You might think about strength.

And that is because she still was.

She was generous.

And so there's something that was incredibly humbling about the fact that she was carrying all of that, but still showing up with so much joy.

[Singing in foreign language] Five days before opening night, the pandemic hit and we were shut down, which, of course, was devastating.

In September of 2021, we returned to St. Louis at the repertory theater.

We were there for a month.

Then we went to McCarter Theater and now here in Boston with our eyes on New York.

What I hope people take away from this piece is an invitation to learn more about Miriam Makeba to listen more closely to understand the the profound impact she had, not just on African music, but on popular music, specifically in the United States.

[Singing in foreign language] It's really to remember her, to honor her, to speak her name, to know her songs and to know that the voice lives.

[Singing in foreign language]