O brinco de Makeba: da figura guardiã de um relicário Kota a signo panafricano

During the Banlieues Bleues Jazz Festival (1989), in Saint-Denis (France), photographer Guy Le Querrec immortalized a meeting between Miriam Makeba (1932-2008) and Nina Simone (1933-2003). If the Studium of photography (Barthes, 1980) is a kiss that seals the meeting of two friends, two divas of the black music and Pan-Africanism, her Punctum is Makeba's earring. The South African singer's earring reproduces in miniature the Kota reliquary guardian figure. De-sacralized, the figure became an ear ornament, no longer a funerary figure but an African sign. Based on the reproduction and social circulation of the image of the figure of a Kota reliquary on different material supports, this article analyzes the inscription of this iconic figure in a pan-African aesthetic, to which the South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba contributed greatly.