Masekela touched lives, healed with his music
City mourns SA jazz legend
NELSON Mandela Bay music personalities yesterday mourned, but also celebrated the life of the late great jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela, 78, who died in Johannesburg yesterday morning.
Masekela was internationally renowned for his Afro-jazz, bebop and funk compositions and performances as well as his outspoken views on current events and topics as diverse as crime, corruption and women’s hairstyles.
Port Elizabeth producer and musician Lawrence Matshiza’s friendship with Masekela stretches back to the early 1980s, when he worked with the trumpet player on his album, Working For a Dollar Bill.
“That’s how we hooked up and, from then on, we often worked together,” Matshiza, who has worked with international stars such as John Legend, Ray Parker jnr, Paul Simon and others, said.
“I feel like I have lost a lot because he was a brother, a father, a mentor and more to me.
“He was not just a gentleman, he was also very smart and I will really miss him.”
Although Matshiza moved back to Port Elizabeth from Johannesburg last year, he still spoke regularly to his friend on the phone and said he would be travelling back to Gauteng later this week to pay his respects to the family.
KwaDwesi saxophone player Patrick Pasha, a veteran musician of Masekela’s vintage, also has many memories.
“He used to come regularly to Port Elizabeth, and we would visit the late Welcome Duru,” he said.
Masekela would tell them he felt lonely in his hotel room and would rather come out to the township to share a cup of tea or coffee with his friends.
“One thing I know for sure, Hugh has brought joy to millions of people,” Pasha said.
Another Port Elizabeth artist, Freshly Ground lead singer Zolani Mahola, who sang with Masekela at jazz festivals, remembered him as “very direct and honest – he didn’t mince words”.
“But he was also very warm, with a big personality,” she said.
“He wasn’t a saint – he had an eye for the ladies and enjoyed his smoke, but he taught me the lesson that you must be yourself, you need to live your own life, to shine.”
Bay born and bred jazz singer Titi Luzipo also had a heavy heart yesterday, remembering the music icon for his sparkling sense of humour and voice for women’s rights.
“I’m having a blue morning because of this news,” she said from Johannesburg yesterday, recalling the times she had rehearsed and performed with Masekela.
“The first time I sang with him I was on backing vocals but I learnt so much.
“If the sound was not right, he would cringe – he was strict about his sound, it had to be cooked for quite a while.
“Bra Hugh was so funny, he was hilarious. Some days, before you knew it, the rehearsal was over.”
She also praised the love Masekela had for Africa and its people – which he shared with iconic South African jazz singer Miriam Makeba, to whom he was married
One thing I know for sure, Hugh has brought joy to millions of people
briefly. “They both believed in what Africa should be,” Luzipo said.
“It is a sad day – not only for his music, but also because he played such a big role in the anti-apartheid movement.
“Music can touch and heal and that is what he did.
“He was hurt by a lot of the things that are going on in our country.
“I remember him saying ‘I hate men who beat women’.
“He hated the state of femicide, for example.
“After voting in South Africa in 1994 we lost a lot of fighting spirit, it was nothing for a woman to be raped, but back in the 1970s it was huge.
“He wasn’t scared to express himself and he was so articulate. We have lost a struggle icon.”
Despite a sex, drugs and rock ’n roll lifestyle in his younger days, Masekela kicked his addictions – to cocaine and alcohol – and went on to become a revered figure in national music circles.
The maestro was awarded at least four honorary doctorates – including one from Rhodes University in Grahamstown in 2015 – and also kept up his street cred right to the end.
Masekela had faced a 10-year battle with prostate cancer and died peacefully in Johannesburg, surrounded by his family.
Funeral arrangements must still be finalised.
INTERVIEWING Hugh Masekela after another print run of his acclaimed autobiography, Still Grazing ‚ Tymon Smith reported how even at the age of 76 (in 2015)‚ the trumpet legend was still calling bulls*** about weaves‚ land and language:
It was a chilly‚ sunny day in May when I sat down with Hugh Masekela at the Franschhoek Literary Festival.
Rhodes had just fallen‚ and Masekela had been in the news after refusing to have his photo taken with a journalist wearing a weave. And BB King had just died. “I first met BB King in 1967 in Chicago when we opened for him. He was a beautiful‚ beautiful‚ gentle gentleman‚” Masekela said in that intensely laid-back‚ jazz-inflected drawl of his.
A twinkle in the eye‚ along with his prodigious trumpet skills‚ has sustained Masekela through a remarkable life.
His re-issued biography teems with more encounters with legends of jazz‚ rock‚ pop and politics than the rest of us could ever dream of.
It’s no accident that the short-lived local edition of Rolling Stone chose Masekela as its first cover star. He’s our own Keith Richards (minus the heroin) who had his fill of women‚ booze and cocaine everywhere from London to LA‚ Lagos to Monrovia.
Throughout the hedonistic decades‚ and the clean life that followed‚ he kept making distinctively warm‚ eclectic music.
On his 1976 album, Colonial Man, in songs like Vasco Da Gama and Cecil Rhodes‚ Masekela laid down a soundtrack for African anti-colonialism – one that chimes perfectly with the zeitgeist of the Rhodes Must Fall movement.
Although he’s played everywhere from the legendary Monterey Festival in 1967 to sold-out crowds in Lesotho in the 1980s‚ and is currently touring more than ever‚ this was Masekela’s first appearance at a literary festival.
“I’m actually a voracious reader and it’s nice to be among people who are interested in writing‚ because South Africa is not top of the charts when it comes to reading.”
He recalled the bibliomania of his father‚ Thomas Selema Masekela – on Saturday mornings‚ when he and his sister, Barbara, were kids‚ “he would make us give him a report of what we’d read and understood”.
“When I was nine he’d throw Aldous Huxley at me and I would say‚ ‘Dad‚ this is too deep’. He’d say‚ ‘There’s a thesaurus‚ there’s a dictionary.’ ”
These days‚ Masekela has plenty of time to read while travelling to gigs.
He’s also working on a sequel to Still Grazing, which was published in 2004 in the US‚ but had very limited distribution in South Africa‚ hence the reissue.
It ends his story in 2002‚ after he’d kicked his spectacular drug and booze habits.
“Fourteen years later I’ve accumulated a lot of brain wealth and different observations‚ so I’m writing the sequel.”
When I asked him about the great weave debate‚ Masekela shrugged.
“They should wear their weaves but they shouldn’t come around me with them. It’s a macabre thing – a person wearing a dead person’s hair is very macabre.
“I also came up with a new word – indigenophobia – being afraid of your own heritage.”
Masekela’s preoccupation with heritage is informed by his intense longing for home during 30 years of exile – and by his experiences of the continent in its post-liberation period. He has set up a heritage foundation. “I’m looking to come up with academies to . . . teach arts and crafts and history and praise poetry.
“My biggest worry is that African society is the only society that imitates other cultures.
“And the new kids‚ especially in urban primary schools‚ don’t speak their mother tongues any more.”
As his biography shows‚ Masekela has never been afraid to call bulls***.
One of the reasons his family let him travel to London on a music scholarship was that they feared his rebellious spirit would inevitably lead to trouble with the apartheid regime if he remained in South Africa.
As for the statue frenzy‚ he declined to criticise the Rhodes Must Fall movement. “But there should be a consistency if you’re going to go against injustice.
“Africans in this country don’t own any land‚ all the businesses are white-owned and nobody says anything about that.”
As Masekela got ready to leave for his next engagement‚ he sighed.
“People are tired. The thing that united us was our revulsion against apartheid‚ and the whole world finally became repulsed – but when it went away they made it the only problem.
“There’s never been a time in human history when people have said: ‘We’re sorry we raped your women‚ we raped your country‚ we raped your land‚ we raped your minerals, and made billions and billions and trillions of pounds off your slave backs – so here’s 500-trillion bucks to show how sorry we are.’
“It’s never happened and I don’t think it will ever happen.”
He’s probably right. But there might be a song in there. This article was first published in the Sunday Times on November 22 2015.