Johnny Clegg Day

Jonathan Paul Clegg, OBE, OIS (7 June 1953 – 16 July 2019) was a South African musician and anthropologist, some of whose work was in musicology focused on the music of indigenous South African peoples. His band Juluka began as a duo with Sipho Mchunu, and was the first group in the South African apartheid-era with a white man and a black man. The pair performed and recorded, later with an expanded lineup.

In 1986 Clegg founded the band Savuka, and also recorded as a solo act, occasionally reuniting with his earlier band partners. Sometimes called Le Zoulou Blanc (French: [lə zulu blɑ̃], for “The White Zulu“), he was an important figure in South African popular music and one of the most prominent white figures in the resistance to apartheid, becoming for a period the subject of investigation by the Security Branch of the South African Police(SAP-SB). His songs mixed English with Zulu lyrics, and also combined idioms of traditional African music with those of modern Western styles.

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