Jain – Makeba
2015 · Directed by Greg & Lio
3.4M Likes
Best comments
1.“I literally typed 'ma kebab' to find this.”
More comments
- 2.“'My kebab makes my body dance.' Yes, it does.”
- 3.“Fun fact: she studied computer graphics, which is why her videos are so freaking good.”
The story
Jain is a French singer who grew up bouncing between Dubai, the Congo and Abu Dhabi, and you can hear every stop on that map in this song. Makeba is her tribute to Miriam Makeba – "Mama Africa" – the South African singer and civil rights voice who was banished from her own country in 1960 and spent more than thirty years in exile. Jain wrote it alone, Maxim Nucci produced it, and it landed on her debut album Zanaka in late 2015.
The video was shot in South Africa by the directing duo Greg & Lio. Jain plays a street-corner god with a sound deck: she flips a switch and the city obeys. Poles rise and sink, buildings shoot up and drop back down, and bursts of color and graffiti splash across the frame on the beat. One woman, one mixing board, a whole skyline dancing on cue.
It earned a Grammy nomination for Best Music Video in 2018. Levi's put the song in one of YouTube's most-watched ads of 2017. Then, years later and out of nowhere, TikTok grabbed it in the summer of 2023 and turned it into a worldwide dance challenge. A tribute to an exiled freedom singer became the soundtrack to a million living rooms. Miriam would have danced too.
