News / National
Johnny Clegg dies
16 Jul 2019 at 15:30hrs | Views
Music legend Johnny Clegg has died.
The local singer's death was confirmed to Channel24 via a statement released to the press by Johnny's longtime manager Roddy Quin.
In the statement Roddy said: "It is with immense sadness that we confirm that Jonathan (Johnny) Clegg, OBE OIS, succumbed to pancreatic cancer at the age of 66 on the afternoon of 16 July 2019 at his family home in Johannesburg, South Africa."
The touching tribute continued: "Johnny leaves deep footprints in the hearts of every person that considers him/herself to be an African. He showed us what it was to assimilate to and embrace other cultures without losing your identity. An anthropologist that used his music to speak to every person. With his unique style of music he traversed cultural barriers like few others. In many of us he awakened awareness."
The 66-year-old musician was diagnosed with cancer in 2015 and told The Juice in 2017: "I'm dealing with another parallel world that I work in with my diagnosis. Pancreatic [cancer] is lethal. There's no way out of it."
Clegg's song Scatterlings of Africa topped charts in South Africa and made gave the singer his first entry into the UK Charts.
The immensely popular song was also featured on the soundtrack to the 1988 Oscar-winning film Rain Man.
Other hits by the veteran performer include: Impi, Great Heart, African Sky Blue and many more.
Clegg was born in Bacup, Lancashire, to an English father and a Rhodesian mother. 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. 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.
The local singer's death was confirmed to Channel24 via a statement released to the press by Johnny's longtime manager Roddy Quin.
In the statement Roddy said: "It is with immense sadness that we confirm that Jonathan (Johnny) Clegg, OBE OIS, succumbed to pancreatic cancer at the age of 66 on the afternoon of 16 July 2019 at his family home in Johannesburg, South Africa."
The touching tribute continued: "Johnny leaves deep footprints in the hearts of every person that considers him/herself to be an African. He showed us what it was to assimilate to and embrace other cultures without losing your identity. An anthropologist that used his music to speak to every person. With his unique style of music he traversed cultural barriers like few others. In many of us he awakened awareness."
The 66-year-old musician was diagnosed with cancer in 2015 and told The Juice in 2017: "I'm dealing with another parallel world that I work in with my diagnosis. Pancreatic [cancer] is lethal. There's no way out of it."
Clegg's song Scatterlings of Africa topped charts in South Africa and made gave the singer his first entry into the UK Charts.
The immensely popular song was also featured on the soundtrack to the 1988 Oscar-winning film Rain Man.
Other hits by the veteran performer include: Impi, Great Heart, African Sky Blue and many more.
Clegg was born in Bacup, Lancashire, to an English father and a Rhodesian mother. 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. 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.
Source - Channel24
