Letta Mbulu - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Letta Mbulu is a South African jazz singer born and raised in Soweto

Soweto

Soweto is a lower-class-populated urban area of the city of Johannesburg in Gauteng, South Africa, bordering the city's mining belt in the south. Its name is an English syllabic abbreviation for South Western Townships...

. She has been active since the 1960s, but left for the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

in 1965 due to Apartheid. In the U.S. she worked with Cannonball Adderley, David Axelrod

David Axelrod (musician)

David Axelrod is an American composer, arranger and producer, working in several musical genres.-Biography:...

and Harry Belafonte

Harry Belafonte

Harold George "Harry" Belafonte, Jr. is an American singer, songwriter, actor and social activist. He was dubbed the "King of Calypso" for popularizing the Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s...

. Her singing can also be heard in Roots
Roots (TV miniseries)
Roots is a 1977 American television miniseries based on Alex Haley's fictional novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family. Roots received 36 Emmy Award nominations, winning nine. It also won a Golden Globe and a Peabody Award. It received unprecedented Nielsen ratings with the finale still...

, The Color Purple
The Color Purple (film)
The Color Purple is a 1985 American period drama film directed by Steven Spielberg, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Alice Walker. It was Spielberg's eighth film as a director , and was a change from the summer blockbusters for which he had become famous...

, and A Warm December, and she was a guest on a Season 6 episode of Soul Train. Mbulu also provided the Swahili chant in Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson

Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records...

's single, "Liberian Girl

Liberian Girl

"Liberian Girl" was the ninth single to be released from Michael Jackson's 1987 album Bad. The song was written as early as 1983 and was among those considered for The Jacksons' Victory album. It was reworked and rewritten for Bad...

Discography

Letta Mbulu Sings (Capitol, 1967)
Free Soul (Capitol, 1968)
Letta (Chisa, 1970)
Naturally (Fantasy, 1972)
There's Music in the Air (A&M, 1976)
Letta (A&M, 1977)
Letta Mbulu - Gold (A&M, 1978)
The Best of Letta & Caiphus (Columbia, 1996)
Greatest Hits (Columbia, 1999)
Letta Mbulu Sings/Free Soul (Stateside, 2005)
Culani Nami (Sony, 2007)

External links

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