Johnny Clegg
| Johnny Clegg | |
|---|---|
Johnny Clegg at la fête de l'Humanité, France, 2007
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Jonathan Clegg |
| Also known as | Johnny Clegg Le Zoulou Blanc |
| Born |
7 June 1953 Bacup, Lancashire, England |
| Genres | Mbaqanga, Afro-pop |
| Instruments | Vocals, guitar, concertina |
| Years active | 1976–present |
| Labels | Capitol Records |
| Associated acts | Juluka, Savuka |
| Website | johnnyclegg.com |
| Past members | Sipho Mchunu (Juluka), Dudu Mntowaziwayo Ndlovu (Savuka) |
| Notable instruments | |
| Fender Esquire | |
Jonathan "Johnny" Clegg OBE OIS (born 7 June 1953) is a South African musician and anthropologist who has recorded and performed with his bands Juluka and Savuka, and more recently as a solo act, occasionally reuniting with his earlier band partners. Sometimes called Le Zoulou Blanc ("The White Zulu"), he is an important figure in South African popular music history, with songs that mix Zulu with English lyrics and African with various Western music styles.
Clegg was born in Bacup, Lancashire, to an English father and a Rhodesian mother. Clegg's mother's family were Jewish immigrants from Poland, and Clegg had a secular Jewish upbringing, learning about the Ten Commandments but refusing to have a bar mitzvah or even associate with other Jewish children at school. His parents divorced when he was still an infant, and he moved with his mother to Rhodesia and then, at age 6, to South Africa, also spending less than a year in Israel during childhood.
As an adolescent, Clegg developed an interest in Celtic music, which led to him learning about and performing Zulu street music and taking part in traditional Zulu dance competitions. He was first arrested at the age of 15 for violating apartheid-era laws in South Africa banning people of different races from congregating together after curfew hours. At the age of 17, he met Sipho Mchunu, a Zulu migrant worker with whom he began performing music. The partnership, which they named Juluka, was profiled in the 1970s television documentary Beats of the Heart: Rhythm of Resistance.
As a young man, in the early stages of his musical career, Clegg 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 later assassinated in 1989.
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