Pata Pata Time

Here’s Miriam Makeba with her biggest hit, “Pata Pata,” as performed on the Ed Sullivan show in 1967 (she’d been singing the song for at least ten years before this). From the quality of the video I suspect it was recorded off someone’s television.

Pata pata was the name of a dance popular in Johannesburg’s shebeens in the 1950s, where one partner would rotate in place while the other crouched and patted her down in the style of a cop patting down a suspect. (I’m guessing the inhabitants of South Africa’s townships knew what being patted down by a cop was like.)

The song hit #12 in the States, and was covered by everyone from the Supremes to Pink Martini. But Makeba’s version has the clicks of the Xhosa language, while I suspect the others do not.

“Pata Pata” was the last song Miriam Makeba ever sang. After a lifetime of exile and fighting injustice, she sang at a concert in Italy rallying the population against the Camorra, collapsed after finishing the song, and died later that night. Requiescat in pace et in amore.