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Zadie Smith on the magic of Tracy Chapman: ‘She didn’t just look like us – she was singing our songs’

The novelist was just 12 when the ex-busker stunned a mammoth crowd at the Free Nelson Mandela concert – and sent everyone racing to Woolworths for her astonishing debut album. Its simple, honest, perfect songs of protest have mesmerised the writer ever since

She looked like our mother: no make-up and the same three-inch dreadlocks Drafted in as replacement for Stevie Wonder – who had last-minute technical issues – it must have taken a lot of courage for an unknown 24-year-old to play in front of 90,000 people, not to mention a worldwide television audience of 600 million. They are addressed directly in Talkin’ Bout a Revolution, and kept in mind throughout: the labour they perform, their hopes and aspirations, the loves they’ve gained and lost, their mistakes and shames, even their crimes. Now that Beyoncé can top the country charts and we have musicians such as Rhiannon Giddens performing with equal expertise at the Newport folk and jazz festivals, it’s sometimes hard to remember how rigidly binary the American music business was in the 1980s and 90s.

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