Dolly Rathebe
Discovered singing at a Johannesburg picnic in 1948, Dolly Rathebe became South Africa's first Black female movie star the following year with her nightclub-singer role in Jim Comes to Jo'burg, then spent the 1950s as the headline draw of Alf Herbert's African Jazz and Variety Show and a fixture of Sophiatown's jazz scene, recording with the African Inkspots and later the Elite Swingsters. Her glamour and defiance — she was arrested under the Immorality Act simply for posing with a white photographer — gave younger Black South African singers, including a teenage Miriam Makeba, a template for what a singing career could look like.
we haven’t charted Dolly Rathebe yet
this stretch of the river isn’t mapped. we trace the watershed one artist at a time — and we’re always heading further upstream.