Hugh Masekela passed last week, and it seemed there was far too little said about one of our time’s great musical masters, his brave stance in politics, self-exile from South Africa and energetic international advocacy for political change and against apartheid.
Masekela was a talented trumpeter, singer, composer and band leader. He made great music throughout his long career, knew and worked with some of the greatest artists of the African diaspora (and others: check out his interplay with Roger McGuinn on the Byrds So You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star). His compositions reflected the lives of labor sojourners and migrants who struggled for dignity and a living in brutal systems of exploitation and degradation; his trumpet playing was spirited, lyrical and transcendent. You can read more in his Wiki or on his official site.
I first heard his music on a juke box at a University of Pennsylvania hang everyone called the Dirty Drug. They had his huge 1968 hit Grazing in the Grass, but I liked the funky flip better, Bajabula Bonke. I saw him in 1990 along with 50,000 other enthusiastic Atlantans when he played for Nelson Mandela’s U. S. Tour after his release from a South African prison and again at Wesleyan University when he played there in 2013. That performance was a revelation, up close and beautiful with a great band and his enormous presence. He told a little joke about being in Zimbabwe with his “old friend” Robert Mugabe, then added, “He stole my cookies.”
There is a lifetime of his good music on record, and your local library will likely have a disc or two: check it out. A great man, a great musician, a great humanitarian and an important voice for freedom, progressive political change and against the poison of racism.
You can see some video of the Wesleyan performance by clicking the image above. All of the songs listed next to it are downloadable with a right click.