What You Should Know About Johnny Clegg, Career And Death
ABOUT JOHNNY CLEGG
Singer-songwriter, dancer, anthropologist, and anti-apartheid activist Jonathan Paul Clegg was a native of South Africa. In 1976, he made his stage debut with Sipho Mchunu in the together with Johnny & Sipho, which also published the song “Woza Friday.” Following that, the two started the band Juluka, which put out its first album in 1979. In addition to recording as a solo artist and starting the band Savuka in 1986, Clegg has periodically reunited with his former bandmates. Occasionally referred to as “The White Zulu” in French word [lə zulu blɑ̃], Le Zoulou Blanc). He was a significant player in South African popular music and a well-known white activist in the opposition to racism, and for a while the South African Police’s security division looked into him. His songs fused working class African music with other genres of Western popular music, as well as English and Zulu lyrics.
JOHNNY CLEGG’S LIFE/CAREER
Dennis Clegg known as a Englishman of Scottish ancestry, and Muriel (Braudo), a Rhodesian woman, welcomed Clegg into the world on June 7, 1953, in Bacup, Lancashire. Jewish immigrants from Belarus and Poland made up Clegg’s mother’s family. He was raised in a modern Jewish home and taught the Ten Commandments, but he declined to have a bar mitzvah or even play with other Jewish kids in college. When he was six months old, his mother and family relocated to Rhodesia, which is now Zimbabwe. Both his parents separated not long after. He and his mother went to South Africa when he was six years old. He also spent a portion of his early years in Israel.
He was raised in Yeoville, an inner-city Johannesburg neighborhood that was primarily home to Jews.He came to the demi-monde of Zulu migrant laborers’ song and dance in the city. Clegg learned the Zulu language, the maskandi guitar, and the isishameni dances of the migrants from Charlie Mzila, who worked as a flat cleaner during the day and as a musician at night. In Clegg’s association with African American artists frequently resulted in his being arrested for violating the Group Areas Act and infringing on agency property. Upon breaking racism rules in South Africa, which prohibited individuals of different races from being alongside after midnight, he was initially jailed at the age of fifteen.
JOHNNY CLEGG’S DEATH
Johnny Clegg passed away on July 16, 2019, as a result of the cancer of the pancreas, which was first identified in 2015. Supported by his family and friends, he passed away in his Johannesburg residence. The next day, he was buried in Johannesburg’s Westpark Cemetery. His two sons, Jesse (who was also a musician) and Jaron, as well as his wife Jenny, survived Clegg.
In 2018, amid the sickness, more than fifty artists from South Africa came together to produce a memorial song called “The Crossing” in honor of Clegg and his musical legacy. The first version of the song, which speaks of the transition from life to their demise, was produced by Clegg in honor of his bandmate Dudu Zulu, who perished in 1992.
umaskandi