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Jonathan (Johnny) Clegg was born June 7, 1953 in
Rochdale near Manchester in England.
 Already
in his youth, Johnny Clegg, a white,
English-speaking person with what he called a
"secular Jewish" upbringing in Britain, Israel,
Zimbabwe and South Africa, became interested in Zulu
street music and took part in traditional Zulu dance
competitions.
As a young man, in the early stages of his
musical career, he combined his music with the study
of anthropology, a subject which he also taught for
a while at the University of the Witwatersrand in
Johannesburg, where he was influenced, among others,
by the work of David Webster, a social
anthropologist who was assassinated in 1989.
Clegg formed the first inter-racial South
African band, Juluka, with gardener and Zulu street
musician Sipho Mchunu. Because it was illegal for
inter-racial bands to perform in South Africa during
apartheid, their first album Universal Man received
no air play, but it became a word-of-mouth hit.
The music was both implicitly and
explicitly political: not only was the fact of the
success of the band (which openly celebrated African
culture in a non-racial band) a thorn in the flesh
of a political system based on racial separation;
the band also produced some explicitly political
songs.
The album "Work for all" picked up on South African
trade union slogans in the mid-80s. Even more
explicit was the Savuka album "Third World
Child" in 1987, with songs like "Asimbonanga", which
called for the release of Nelson Mandela, and which
called out the names of three representative martyrs
of the South African liberation struggle: Steve Biko,
Victoria Mxenge, and Neil Aggett.
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Juluka were able to tour in Europe, and
had two platinum and five gold albums,
becoming an international success. Juluka
was disbanded in 1986, when Mchunu was asked
by his father to return home and herd the
family goats, although Mchunu made some solo
recordings afterwards. Clegg went on to form
his second inter-racial band, Savuka,
continuing to blend African music with
European, especially Celtic, influences.
Briefly reunited with Mchunu in the
mid-90's, Clegg reformed Juluka and toured
throughout the world as the opening act for
King Sunny Ade, as well as headliner
performances.
The name Juluka is based on the Zulu
word for "sweat", and Savuka is based on the
Zulu word for "we have risen" or "we have
awakened".
Clegg and his band often make an
international tour during May-August (South
African winter). However, the tours are
usually limited to France and surrounding
countries.
 In
June 2004, the Johnny Clegg Band toured
North America for the first time in over
eight years, doing 22 concerts in one month.
Even though they had no albums for sale in
North America during those eight years, and
no significant media coverage, they filled
most of their venues.
Copyright
This article is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation Licence. It uses material
from the Wikipedia article "Johnny
Clegg"
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