09:57 AEST Wed Apr 29 2009 By Alyssa Braithwaite http://news.ninemsn.com.au/entertainment/807471/cleggs-music-a-cultural-melting-pot
South African singer Johnny Clegg is a world musician with truly global inspirations.
During the three decades he has been making music, Clegg has borrowed from Zulu street rhythms, Zimbabwean guitar playing, folk rock and hip hop music.
He is known around the world as "the white Zulu" for his ability to blend Western and African influences in his music.
"We mix and find meeting points between different cultural, rhythmic, melodic and linguistic traditions," Clegg told AAP from Johannesburg.
"I've sung in Indian, I've sung in Zulu, the last album I did songs with French, Zulu and English in the same song, I draw broadly on Zulu traditional street music, I draw sometimes on some Zimbabwean guitar style, and obviously rock and pop.
"The wonderful thing about a world musician is they're allowed to meander through all the various traditions really."
Clegg was born in the UK, but grew up in South Africa, where as a teenager and budding guitarist he developed an interest in traditional Zulu music and dance.
He formed South Africa's first racially mixed band, Juluka, with Zulu musician Sipho Mchunu.
Not afraid to get political, Clegg's 1987 song Asimbonanga (We haven't seen him) called for the release of Nelson Mandela.
Since then he has lent his voice to Mandela's 46664 HIV and Aids campaign, and performed at the former South African president's 90th birthday concert.
Clegg said Mandela has been an inspiration to him for many years.
"I'm like most people who came out of the 1980s and the 70s and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa - Mandela was a very important central figure which acted as a unifying symbol," Clegg said.
Clegg said he prefers to express his political beliefs through his music.
"I think all art, real art, is revolutionary - all real art challenges and puts up an alternative view," he said.
"There's a very strong tradition in folk music and folk rock music of social and political comment.
"It makes you see something else is possible, and to that extent it can change somebody's ideas."
Now working on a new album that he describes as "a very weird mixture" of modern and traditional music, Clegg will take time out from recording for his second Australian tour in late May, visiting Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
