A queen of music died unexpectedly last night at the age of 76. If you saw When We Were Kings, the documentary about the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle” in Zaire, the film makers with much poetic license juxtapose footage of her singing “Amampondo” with the story of the female “succubus” prophesied to curse Foreman. It’s an inelegant part of the film and does Makeba little justice.
Here’s a video of the same song in a different and utterly mesmerizing performance, and a much richer sense of the woman.
