Miriam Makeba died Monday

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) — Miriam Makeba, the “Mama Africa” whose sultry voice gave South Africans hope when the country was gripped by apartheid, died Monday. She was 76.

The Pineta Grande clinic in Castel Volturno, near the southern city of Naples, said Makeba died of a heart attack after collapsing on stage in Italy.

In her dazzling career, Makeba performed with musical legends from around the world — jazz maestros Nina Simone and Dizzy Gillespie, Harry Belafonte, Paul Simon — and sang for world leaders such as John F. Kennedy and Nelson Mandela.

Her distinctive style, which combined jazz, folk and South African township rhythms, managed to get her banned from South Africa for over 30 years, although she insisted she wasn’t trying to be political — she was just singing about her life.

Makeba collapsed after singing one of her most famous hits “Pata Pata,“ her family said. Her grandson, Nelson Lumumba Lee, was with her as well as her longtime friend, Italian promoter Roberto Meglioli.

The first African to win a Grammy award, Makeba started singing in Sophiatown, a cosmopolitan neighborhood of Johannesburg that was a cultural hotspot in the 1950s before its black residents were forcibly removed by the apartheid government.