Hugh Masekela

Though he was a one-hit wonder on the pop charts, trumpeter/singer Hugh Masekela had a long and distinguished career as a jazzman, cultural activist and voice for South African liberation. Raised by his grandmother in KwaGuqa Township, South Africa, Masekela was drawn to petty crime as a youth but turned from this when he discovered jazz, initially by watching the movie Young Man With a Horn at age 14. He also befriended Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, cofounder of the antiapartheid school that Masekela attended. On a trip to America Huddleston spoke of Masekela to Louis Armstrong, who handed over a trumpet for him. The teenaged Masekela soon mastered the horn and began building local fame as a jazzman. However the 1960 Sharpeville massacre marked a more brutal stage of apartheid and the banning of jazz performances; Masekela then left the country, first for London and then America. He criticized apartheid from then on, becoming friends with the like-minded Harry Belafonte. Beginning with the 1962 album Trumpet Africaine, he began incorporating African traditional music into jazz. From 1963-67 he lived in Harlem and Englewood, NJ with his then-wife, singer Miriam Makeba; the couple's social circle included Marlon Brando, Nina Simone, Ray Charles and their Englewood neighbor Dizzy Gillespie. In 1968 Masekela recorded "Grazing in the Grass," a jazz version of an African song, which hit Number One on the US charts and sold four million copies. This wasn't his only crossover; he also played a trumpet solo on the Byrds' "So You Want to Be a Rock & Roll Star" and played the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. In 1974 Masekela and Stewart Levione (a record producer who'd find greater fame in the MTV era) Stewart Levine organized the Zaire 74 music festival in Kinshasa set around the Muhammad Ali/George Foreman fight. During the 1980's Masekela set up a recording studio and music school in Botawana, but was still unable to cross the border to South Africa due to apartheid. He joined Paul Simon's Graceland tour (alongside ex-wife Makeba) in 1987, where his set always featured "Bring Him Back Home"-a song that called for the return of Nelson Mandela from prison. After Mandela was set free Masekela was finally able to return to South Africa and perform that song with Mandela present. Masekela remained a high-profile musician during the era of South African freedom, collaborating on two albums with Herb Alpert, onstage with the Dave Matthews Band, and on a reunion tour with Simon. He was co-creator of the internationally popular musical Serafina, which depicted life under apartheid. His 2004 autobiography, Still Grazing: The Musical Journey of Hugh Masekela, revealed that he had struggled with alcoholism over the previous three decades. He played a globally broadcast concert to kick off the World Cup finals in South Africa in 2010 and was given South Africa's highest honor, the Order of Ikhamanga. His final album, 2016's No Borders blended jazz with township music, Fela Kuti-inspired Afrobeat, and rap. Masekela died in Johannesburg in January 2018.