Hugh Masekela

composer; musician

Personal Information

Born April 4, 1931, in Witbank, South Africa; father was a health inspector and a sculptor; divorced Miriam Makeba (a folk singer), 1966.
Education: Attended missionary schools; studied music at Guildhall School of Music, London, England; attended the Manhattan School of Music, New York City, 1960-64.

Career

Began playing trumpet with South African dance bands while a teenager; member of Alfred Herbert's African Jazz Revue, 1958-59; formed own band, the Jazz Epistles, 1959; studied music in England, and in the United States, 1960-64; co-founder of Chisa Records, 1965; leader of and member of numerous musical groups, 1965--; left United States for Botswana, 1982, joined the Kalahari Band; founded the Botswana International School of Music, 1986; co-wrote (with Mbongemi Ngema) musical play Sarafina!; returned to South Africa, 1990.

Life's Work

South African trumpeter, fleugelhornist, composer, and singer Hugh Ramopolo Masekela is an acknowledged master of African jazz. He is also one of his country's most recognizable freedom fighters in the battle against apartheid. Masekela was born on April 4, 1939 in Witbank, a coal-mining town near Johannesburg, South Africa. Although his father was a health inspector and famous sculptor, the home was a modest one, and the young boy was raised by his grandmother. At age six Hugh was singing the songs of the street and from age nine attended missionary schools, where he learned to play the piano.

He first became interested in playing the trumpet after seeing the movie Young Man with a Horn (1949), the story of Bix Beiderbecke. Initially his greatest influences were the performers of American swing. Later he became interested in be-bop jazz and the music of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, who Masekela credits with the development of his talent.

As a teenager Masekela began playing trumpet with South African dance bands and toured to major African cities. In 1958 he joined Alfred Herbert's African Jazz Revue and the following year he formed his own band--the Jazz Epistles, with Dollar Brand (pianist), Makaya Ntshoko (drummer), Jonas Gwanga (trombonist), and Kippie Moeketsi (alto saxophonist).

Because South African music schools were not open to him, Masekela went abroad to continue his musical training. He studied at London's Guildhall School of Music, and he received a scholarship from Harry Belafonte to the Manhattan School of Music, in New York City, which he attended from 1960 to 1964. He also worked with Belafonte's Clara Music and arranged several albums for his then-wife African folk singer Miriam Makeba, from whom he was divorced in 1966.

In 1964 he formed another group and the following year he teamed up with fellow student Stewart Levine to found Chisa Records. The Emancipation of Hugh Masekela was the first of the eleven albums the team produced. In 1968 Masekela became one of the first African artists to pierce America's pop music world when his song "Grazing in the Grass" topped Billboard's single's chart for two weeks. Written in mbaqanga, a recombination of traditional Zulu music and black American pop, "Grazing in the Grass" reflects Masekela's African heritage.

Masekela toured parts of Africa in 1973, performing with African musicians. In Ghana he met Nigerian jazzman Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and the Ghanian group Hedzoleh Soundz. He became the group's leader and made recordings with it, including Masekela:Introducing Hedzoleh Soundz. In 1974 the group toured the United States.

Masekela moved back to Africa in 1980, settling in Botswana, where he lived for four and a half years. He had a mobile recording studio shipped from California, and working with Jive Afrika Records, he released an album Technobush. The lead song, "Don't Go Lose It Baby," topped the dance charts in the United States. In 1986 Masekela founded the Botswana International School of Music, a nonprofit institute to train African musicians. The following year he signed on as a guest star for Paul Simon's Graceland tour, which was a popular and critical success, though it garnered stiff criticism from those who claimed that Simon had violated a United Nations cultural boycott of South Africa when he recorded parts of the album Graceland in Johannesburg. Masekela does not appear on the record.

In 1983 Masekela met South African playwright Mbongemi Ngema, who had written several critically acclaimed plays. One of them was Woza Albert in which Ngema used Masekela's song "Coal Train." After seeing a performance of this play, Masekela went backstage to meet Ngema. They became quick friends and decided to collaborate on a play. Winnie Mandela, wife of the then-imprisoned South African political activist, suggested that they portray the children of South Africa and their resistance to the bantu education, teaching that prepared them to serve the white minority in their country.

Ngema wrote the book and some of the music for what was to become Sarafina!, titled for the main character, a woman's name common in the townships around Johannesburg, and asked Masekela to compose additional music. Rather loosely structured, the play is more like a series of choral set pieces than musical theater but the songs and dances are all tied together thematically by the Soweto uprising. The action takes place in schoolyard of the Morris Issacson High School, the site of the 1976 Soweto uprising, during which nearly 600 students were killed and many more shot by police for protesting the teaching of Afrikkans--considered by them the language of oppression--instead of English. In Sarafina!, inspired by their student leader, the young Sarafina, the students at the school put on a play that depicts the release of the imprisoned Nelson Mandela.

Ngema auditioned and trained about twenty young South Africans from the townships for roles in Sarafina! The members of the ten-piece band that provides the energetic mbquanga music are dressed as soldiers in a set that is made up of a chain link fence and a silver tank. At the beginning of the piece, the performers are dressed in the trouser and blouse uniforms of the school, but by the end they are in tribal costumes, dancing and singing their heritage and protesting their oppression.

At its 1987 premier in South Africa, Sarafina! was an immediate hit. It went from Johannesburg to the Lincoln Center theater later that year, and in January 1988 it moved to Broadway, where, an instant success, it played for two years to sell-out crowds before beginning a national tour. A second troupe was formed to perform the Tony Award-nominated musical in Europe. "I think it's one of the most rewarding projects I've done," Masekela told Detroit News and Free Press writer Cassandra Spratling.

When Masekela left South Africa to study music, he began what was to become a thirty-year self-imposed exile in protest of apartheid. Despite his physical separation, he never lost his emotional and cultural ties, or the desire to see his homeland freed from racial inequality. "I'm not the kind of musician you hear saying `my music'," Masekela told Donna Britt of the Washington Post. "I don't think I have music. I think everybody gets music from the community they come from.... And every note that I play, every song that I've ever worked on is really from the people. And their freedom will usher in a place where I can say, `Now I'm an artist'."

In late 1990 Masekela returned to South Africa to visit his mother's grave for the first time. He also set up a residence to use during part of the year, thus ending his exile. Masekela told Boston Herald writer, "I will go back a lot now I think. There is no doubt in our minds that we will be free one day soon and that South Africa will become a normal society. There's a lot of work to be done with the reconstruction that will be coming up. We'll all have to be a part of it."

Works

Selective Discography

• Trumpet Africaine, Mercury Records, 1960.
• Home Is Where the Music Is, Chisa Records, 1972.
• Masekela: Introducing Hedzoleh Soundz, 1973.
• I Am Not Afraid, Chisa Records, 1974.
• Main Event (with Herb Alpert), A & M, 1978.
• Technobush, Jive Afrika Records, 1984.
• Waiting for the Rain, Jive Afrika Records, 1985.
• Uptownship, Novus/RCA, 1990.

Further Reading

Sources

• Africa Report, July-August 1987.
• American Visions, April 1990.
• Boston Globe, October 26, 1990.
• Boston Herald, March 6, 1988; October 26, 1990.
• Chicago Sun Times, August 5, 1990.
• Detroit News and Free Press, June 3, 1990.
• (Hackensack, New Jersey) Record, October 26, 1987.
• Harford Courant, April 24, 1988; March 21, 1990.
• (Madison, Wisconsin) Times, April 4, 1989.
• Milwaukee Journal, July 29, 1990.
• (Newark, New Jersey) Star-Ledger, October 3, 1989; January 24, 1988.
• New York Post, October 24, 1987; October 26, 1987.
• New York Tribune, February 12, 1988.
• Philadelphia Inquirer, November 22, 1987.
• Pittsburgh Press, June 1, 1989.
• Providence Journal, July 20, 1990.
• Rolling Stone, June 10, 1982; July 2, 1987.
• San Francisco Examiner, June 14, 1990.
• (Springfield, Massachusetts) Sunday Republican, January 24, 1988.
• Washington (D.C.) Times, April 27, 1990.
• --Jeanne M. Lesinski

• Born: April 04, 1939, Witbank, South Africa
• Active: '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s, 2000s
• Genres: Jazz
• Instrument: Flugelhorn, Trumpet, Vocals
• Representative Albums: "The Lasting Impression of Ooga Booga," "The Boy's Doin' It," "Tomorrow"
• Representative Songs: "Grazing in the Grass," "Bajabula Bonke (The Healing S," "Bo Masekela"

Biography

Hugh Masekela has an extensive jazz background and credentials, but has enjoyed major success as one of the earliest leaders in the world fusion mode. Masekela's vibrant trumpet and flugelhorn solos have been featured in pop, R&B, disco, Afropop and jazz contexts. He's had American and international hits, worked with bands around the world, and played with African, African-American, European and various American musicians during a stellar career. His style, especially on flugelhorn, is a charismatic blend of striking upper register lines, half valve effects, repetitive figures and phrases, with some note bending, slurs and tonal colors. Though he's often simplified his playing to fit into restrictive pop formulas, Masekela's capable of outstanding ballad and bebop work. He began singing and playing piano as a child, influenced by seeing the film Young Man With A Horn at 13. Masekela started playing trumpet at 14. He played in the Huddleston Jazz Band, which was led by anti-apartheid crusader and group head Trevor Huddleston. Huddleston was eventually deported, and Masekela co-founded the Merry Makers of Springs along with Jonas Gwangwa. He later joined Alfred Herbert's Jazz Revue, and played in studio bands backing popular singers. Masekela was in the orchestra for the musical King Kong, whose cast included Miriam Makeba. He was also in the Jazz Epistles with Abdullah Ibrahim, Makaya Ntshoko, Gwanga and Kippie Moeketsi. Masekela and Makeba, his wife at that time, left South Africa one year before Ibrahim and Sathima Bea Benjamin in 1961. Such musicians as Dizzy Gillespie, John Dankworth and Harry Belafonte assisted him. Masekela studied at the Royal Academy of Music, then the Manhattan School of Music. During the early '60s, his career began to explode. He recorded for MGM, Mercury and Verve, developing his hybrid African/pop/jazz style. Masekela moved to California and started his own record label, Chisa. He cut several albums expanding this formula and began to score pop success. The song "Grazing In The Grass" topped the charts in 1968 and eventually sold four million copies worldwide. That year Masekela sold out arenas nationwide during his tour, among them Carnegie Hall. He recorded in the early '70s with Monk Montgomery and the Crusaders. Masekela moved in a more ethnic direction during the '70s. He traveled to London to play with Nigerian Afrobeat great Fela Kuti and his Africa '70; then came a session with Dudu Pukwana, Eddie Gomez and Ntshoko among others that resulted in his finest jazz/African album, Home Is Where The Music Is. Masekela toured Guinea with the Ghanian Afropop band Hedzoleh Soundz, then recorded a series of albums with them both in California and Africa with guest stints from the Crusaders, Patti Austin and others. Masekela alternated between American and Africa, cutting a successful pop/dance album with Herb Alpert in the late '70s. During the '80s, Masekela returned to South Africa. He visited Zimbabawe and Botswana, and recorded two albums with The Kalahari Band that once more merged jazz-rock, funk and pop. Masekela was part of Paul Simon's Graceland tour in the mid-'80s, while he continued recording and produced sessions by Makeba. Starting in the mid-90's, Masekela began releasing a stream of albums and collections that showed his versitility and growth in South African jazz. Though the jazz content of his work has varied over the years, Hugh Masekela has far more material on the plus side than the negative. ~ Ron Wynn, All Music Guide

20th Century Masters: Millennium Collection Buy this CD	Grazing in the Grass: The Best of Hugh Masekela Buy this CD	Collection Buy this CD	Johannasburg Buy this CD	BBC Live in Concert Buy this CD
Black to the Future Buy this CD	Black to the Future Buy this CD	Time Buy this CD	Time Buy this CD	Revival Buy this CD

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