Jonathan Paul Clegg, OBE, OIS (7 June 1953 â€" 16 July 2019) was a
South African musician, singer-songwriter, dancer, anthropologist and
anti-apartheid activist, 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: [lÉ™ zulu blÉ'̃], 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. His songs mixed English with Zulu lyrics, and
also combined idioms of traditional African music with those of modern
Western styles.Clegg was born on 7 June 1953 in Bacup, Lancashire, to
an English father of Scottish descent, Dennis Clegg, and a Rhodesian
mother, Muriel (Braudo). Clegg's mother's family were Jewish
immigrants from Lithuania, 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 (now Zimbabwe) and then, at the age of six, to South Africa,
also spending part of a year in Israel during his childhood.
South African musician, singer-songwriter, dancer, anthropologist and
anti-apartheid activist, 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: [lÉ™ zulu blÉ'̃], 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. His songs mixed English with Zulu lyrics, and
also combined idioms of traditional African music with those of modern
Western styles.Clegg was born on 7 June 1953 in Bacup, Lancashire, to
an English father of Scottish descent, Dennis Clegg, and a Rhodesian
mother, Muriel (Braudo). Clegg's mother's family were Jewish
immigrants from Lithuania, 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 (now Zimbabwe) and then, at the age of six, to South Africa,
also spending part of a year in Israel during his childhood.
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