The South African singer-songwriter Johnny Clegg he died on Tuesday 66 years old, after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2015, your representative reported Roddy Guinn.
Clegg died at his home with his family in Johannesburg, Guinn said in a statement.
“Johnny leaves deep traces in the hearts of all people who consider themselves African, showing us what it was like to assimilate and embrace other cultures without losing their identity,” said the representative.
Guinn recalled that Clegg was “an anthropologist who used his music to talk to each person”.
Clegg, nominated to Grammy and winner of Billboard award, known for a Zulu fluid that he mixed in his traditional folk music known as mbaqangaIt was also an open critical of the apartheid government that governed South Africa until 1994.
In 2012, Clegg received the presidential Order of Ikhamanga, which rewards excellence in the arts; and in 2015 he received the distinction of “official of the Order of the British Empire” in the United Kingdom.
In an interview in 2017, the singer spoke with resignation of the disease that, in the end, has taken his life: “I deal with another parallel world in which I work with my diagnosis.Pancreatic cancer is lethal. “, he pointed.
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