TikTok has its own laws and makes its own hits. It is often difficult to explain why something is banging through the ceiling there. A current mystery is the song “Makeba” by the French singer Jain, which she released on her first album in 2015. It recently went viral. Countless dance clips that use a small segment of the song are circulating on the platform, the phenomenon has also spilled over to Instagram and the music video now has over 193 million clicks on YouTube.
There are various theories as to how it all started. Jain himself said in an interview with the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” that the TikTok clip of two Kyrgyz gymnasts was the starting point. “It definitely came from the East,” says the singer, whose real name is Jeanne Galice. Another lead leads to an awkward dance performed by comedian Bill Hader on the show “Saturday Night Live,” which has led to a spate of memes underlined with “Makeba.”
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The song was also given a powerful boost by a TikTok video by American coach and consultant Phil Stringer, who found himself in the absurd situation of being the only passenger on an American Airline flight at the end of June. He shot a hilarious clip of him joking around with the staff on the ground and on board the empty plane and captioned it with “Makeba” – which has been viewed more than 61 million times so far.
The song’s sudden popularity is completely understandable, as it immediately gets stuck in your head and is easy to dance to with its straight mid-tempo beat. The bassline borrowed from Bohannon’s 1978 “Me And The Gang” gives it a driving groove, and the pulled-up “Oh oui” at the start of the chorus works like a mini-siren sung. The following lines “Makeba ma qué bella/ Can I get a oh oui Makeba/ Makes my body dance for you” don’t make a lot of sense, but it’s clear that Jain is paying homage to Miriam Makeba.
In the generation of the 31-year-old Frenchwoman, who grew up in Congo and Dubai, among other places, the South African singer, who died in 2008, is no longer a household name for many – just as little for the even younger TikTok dancers. Maybe they google a bit and then a “Pata Pata” challenge will soon go viral.