Hugh Masekela

Hugh Masekela

Hugh Masekela is a South African flugelhorn and cornet player, born in Witbank, South Africa in 1939 and died in 2018. His work spans jazz, soul jazz and afrobeat, and he is associated with both Hugh Masekela & The Union of South Africa and the Umoja Singers Chorale. He records on the Chisa label.

Career

In 1961, during the anti-apartheid campaign, he is exiled to the United States and befriends Harry Belafonte. He works mainly in jazz ensembles, and also appears as a guest on recordings by The Byrds and Paul Simon. He plays through the Sophiatown scene with The Jazz Epistles and with King Kong before arriving in New York in the early 1960s.

He becomes closely connected with other South African musicians, including Abdullah Ibrahim, and is said to be initially inspired by Trevor Huddleston, a British priest who finances his first trumpet. In the 1980s he tours with Paul Simon in support of Graceland and also works with West and Central African musicians. He sets up a mobile studio in Botswana, just over the South African border, where he re-absorbs mbaqanga strains, a style he continues to use after returning to South Africa in the early 1990s.

Recordings and notable songs

Masekela has hits in the United States with the pop jazz songs “Up, Up and Away” and “Grazin’ in the Grass”, the latter reaching number one. In 1987, “Bring Him Back Home” becomes an anthem for the movement to free Nelson Mandela. Other significant recordings include “Coal Train (Stimela)”, “Ziph’nkomo”, “Don’t Go Lose It Baby”, “Ha Le Se Li De Khanna (The Dowry Song)”, “Bajabule Bonka”, “Grazing in the Grass”, “U-Dwi”, “The Joke of Life” and “The Boy’s Doin’ It”.

His song “Soweto Blues”, sung by Miriam Makeba, responds to the violence of the Soweto riots in 1976. He also records with Kalahari in the 1980s, and his later work includes two albums made with Herb Alpert, as well as the recordings Techno-Bush, Tomorrow, Uptownship, Beatin’ Aroun’ de Bush, Sixty, Time and Revival.

Other work and legacy

Masekela contributes to the Broadway production Sarafina! and appears in the 2003 documentary Amandla!, which looks at the role of South African music in the struggle against apartheid. In 2004, he publishes his autobiography, Grazin' in The Grass: The Musical Journey of Hugh Masekela, which covers his life under apartheid and his struggles with alcohol addiction from the late 1970s through the 1990s.

He is the father of Sal Masekela.