Johnny Clegg was a singer/songwriter and musician whose music was painted by his upbringing in a secular Jewish family in South Africa. Inspired by Zulu street music and anthropology, he formed the Juluka, the first popular racially mixed South African band, in 1969 during the apartheid era, when it was illegal for racially diverse bands to perform. Juluka's debut album, Universal Man, received no radio play in the state but became a hit strictly through world of mouth. Renowned internationally for Juluka as well as his follow-up project, Savuka, Clegg went on to drop his debut solo album, New World Survivor, in 2002, and he continued to perform and release new material on his own as well as with his bands till he passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2019.
