HUGH MASEKELA
Jazz trumpeter and songwriter (1939–2018)
IN april 1985, Nelson Mandela managed to smuggle a letter out of Cape town’s Pollsmoor Prison to Hugh Masekela, wishing him a happy birthday and the best of luck with his recording projects. Masekela responded by writing the brassy, exuberant “Bring Him Back Home”, with a vocal choir that imagined Mandela as a free man, walking the streets of soweto. Despite being banned by the south african regime, the song was adopted as an international anthem of the anti-apartheid movement when it appeared on Masekela’s 1987 album, Tomorrow. When Mandela was finally granted his freedom three years later, coinciding with the lifting of the ban on the african National Congress, it was often played during state visits and appearances.
Masekela’s music had been synonymous with the anti-apartheid struggle for some time. “Mace and Grenades”, “stimela (Coal train)” and “soweto Blues” were among his most potent songs of protest, the latter (sung by his ex-wife Mariam Makeba) a bitter response to the student massacre that followed the 1976 soweto uprising.
the trumpeter, who’d been inspired to take up the instrument in his teens after watching Kirk Douglas’ portrayal of Bix Beiderbecke in Young Man With A Horn, had lived in exile from south africa since 1960. He left first for London, securing a place at the Guildhall school Of Music, before moving to New York to study classical trumpet.
Masekela enjoyed a minor jazz-pop hit with Jimmy Webb’s “up, up and away” in 1967, but struck big when “Grazing in the Grass” made the top of the us charts a year later. By then, his profile had already been raised by guest recordings with the Byrds and an appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival. in the latter half of the 1980s he and other south african artists were part of Paul simon’s
Graceland tour. Having returned to his homeland in 1990, after an absence of three decades, Masekela continued to perform until last year, when he underwent treatment for prostate cancer. south african president Jacob Zuma declared that his “contribution to the struggle for liberation will never be forgotten”.