An engaged social anthropologist, he not only mastered the theories but delved into the culture and disseminated it. He preceded each song with snippets of Zulu culture, information, commentary, humor and personal anecdotes relevant and unique to that song. In the early stages of his musical career, Clegg combined his music with the study of anthropology at Wits, where he was influenced, among others, by the work of David Webster, a social anthropologist who was later assassinated in 1989. The partnership, which they named Johnny & Sipho and then Juluka, was profiled in the 1970s television documentary Beats of the Heart: Rhythm of Resistance.Īs a young man, Clegg pursued an academic career for four years, lecturing at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) and the University of Natal, and writing several seminal scholarly papers on Zulu music and dance. At the age of 17, he met Sipho Mchunu, a Zulu migrant worker with whom he began performing music. 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. Clegg's involvement with black musicians often led to arrests for trespassing on government property and for contravening the Group Areas Act.
Under the tutelage of Charlie Mzila, a flat cleaner by day and musician by night, Clegg mastered both the Zulu language and the maskandi guitar and isishameni dance styles of the migrants. 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 6, to South Africa, also spending less than a year in Israel during childhood.Īs an adolescent in Johannesburg's northern suburbs, he encountered the demi-monde of the city's Zulu migrant workers' music and dance. 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. Sometimes called Le Zoulou Blanc, 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.Ĭlegg was born in Bacup, Lancashire, to an English father and a Rhodesian mother. Johnny Clegg (Jonathan Clegg, 7 June 1953 – 16 July 2019) was a South African musician and anthropologist who recorded and performed with his bands Juluka and Johnny Clegg and Savuka, and as a solo act, occasionally reuniting with his earlier band partners.