"Makeba" by Jain

About

"Makeba" is a song by French musical artist Jain referencing South African activist Miriam Makeba, aka "Mama Africa," that was released in November 2015. In June 2023, "Makeba" saw a spike in virality as it trended on TikTok, where it inspired dance and lip-dub videos.

Origin

On November 6th, 2015, French singer-songwriter Jain released her debut album Zanaka. One of the songs on the album is titled "Makeba," which became notably popular, peaking at number seven on the French Singles chart. On November 30th, 2016, the song's official music video was released on YouTube,^[1] garnering over 167 million views in seven years (shown below).

As early as May 22nd, 2023, the song began to see considerable use on TikTok in dance videos and videos compiling footage from the user's phone. For example, on that date, TikTokers^[2][3] @mary.lko and @morgen4real_official666 posted videos using the song, garnering over 2.5 million views and 6.7 million views respectively in three weeks (shown below, left and right). It is unclear who exactly used the audio first in a viral video.

Spread

The song continued to grow over the following weeks, becoming notably popular throughout June 2023. On May 24th, 2023, TikToker^[4] @jelikam posted a video dancing to the song, garnering over 14.9 million views in three weeks (shown below, left). On May 28th, TikToker^[5] @sierrakai.1 posted a video doing an original dance to the song, garnering over 3.7 million views in the same span of time. She posted numerous videos doing the dance following this, including an upload to TIkTok^[6] on June 6th that gained over 12.1 million views in just over a week (shown below, right).

On June 9th, TikToker^[7] and e-girl @daisybloomss posted a video dancing to the song, garnering over 25.2 million views in a week (shown below). On June 15th, Aural Crave^[8] and Broadway World^[9] published stories on the virality of the song on TikTok.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References