The first, and perhaps only, time I've grieved the death of a celebrity was on New Year's day, 1973.  Late the night before, New Year's Eve 1972, Pittsburgh Pirate's star outfielder Roberto Clemente died in an airplane crash on his way to Puerto Rico.  By then I was a loyal Braves, not Pirates, fan, but in truth I was a fan of baseball in its entirety.  Clemente was an amazing ball player who had just gotten his 3000th career hit at the end of the 1972 season.  No right fielder could ever throw a baseball as hard or as accurately as he could, before or since.  True, he was not on my favorite team, but I was a fan nonetheless.  And as my parents, clearly concerned about my reaction, told me that New Year's morning about this tragic accident - he was on his way to his home territory of Puerto Rico on a humanitarian relief project- I entered a sincere period of mourning.  A few days later, Roberto Clemente's biography came out (what a coincidence) and I rushed to our local bookstore, bought and read it all in the same day.  It seems this loss was all my friends and I talked about.

Since then, I was 11 at the time, there have been many celebrity deaths.  Athletes and actors, Popes and Presidents, musicians and movie stars; but none has effected me as deeply as the death of the Pittsburgh Pirates' Hall-of-Famer.  Surely there were the passings that caught me by surprise:  The King of Rock and Roll, the Prince of Pop, Princess Diana and Prince.  John Belucchi and John Lennon.  These were surprising, certainly, caused me to reflect, but nothing remotely like to grieving.  

Perhaps the closest I'd come was with the passing of Mother Teresa over Labor Day weekend of 1997, but she was 87 years old, and, let's face, was truly in a better place than the slims of Calcutta that had been her home for decades upon decades.  And there were other celebrity deaths that left me with this "Yes it's sad, but it was a life well lived" response: David Wilkerson, Bob Hope, Jimmy Stewart and Dr. Seuss.  But none of these left me feeling quite like the death of Roberto Clemente.

Until this week, when I heard of the passing of Joseph Shabalala, the founding member of the best selling African musical group in history: Ladysmith Black Mambazo.  True, at 58, I am not reacting to this news like I did as an 11 year old, but the news made me sad.  Much has been written about this acapella choir: how they started singing work songs in South Africa, entered local competitions, and usually won.  How Paul Simon discovered them, and how they appeared on his landmark "Graceland" album.  How, since then, they have recorded with Dolly Parton, Josh Groban and on the Lion King soundtrack.  Their 17 Grammy nominations and five wins, their singing out against apartheid, and their singing at Nelson Mandela's inauguration.  All this and more can be found on line.

Rather, I'd like to write about why I've felt a personal connection with this group.  Like most westerners, I first heard of them when "Graceland" came out.  Shortly afterwards, I read an interview with Shabalala, the founding member and leader of the group.  The interview was in "Cornerstone", a 'underground' Christian arts magazine.  Shabalala spoke of his relationship with Jesus in such a frank and deeply personal way.  It is one of those rare articles you remember 25 years after reading it.

Then, in the lare 90's I got the news that Ladysmith Black Mambazo was coming to Rockland, Maine.  My wife and I went, and it was arguably the best concert I've ever been to: the music, dance, color and sheer fun they brought to the stage.  Not a "Christian" band, but a group of sincere Christian believers, who let that show whether singing hymns, political songs, or love songs; whether singing in Zulu, French or English.  What a night.

So I had to purchase their "Live at Montreaux" CD.  For a while that was the only thing I listened to.  Though most of the cuts were not in English, that's one of the reasons I liked it so much.  So much US pop music lyrics were so bad I'd rather have listened to a language I couldn't understand. This was the CD that I'd blast when my daughter, Rose, and I would spend free Saturday afternoons on the slip and slide at the camp I directed. I used their song "Scatter the Fire" from another album, for a black light cigar box routine.  I've only performed it three times, but I'm working to revise it for future shows.

In recent years, Joseph Shabalala had turned the leadership of the group over to his son and other family members.  He was 78.  But his death still made me sad. Not 11 year old baseball fan sad, but sad.  No one has ever done what he did, and his music was a major part of history in the 1980's and 90's.  He is missed.