Bra Hugh: Apartheid Fighter on the Dance Floor

Johannesburg — After 64 years of entertaining the world with offerings such as Soweto Blues, Bring Him Back Home — the allergic trumpet co...

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Johannesburg — After 64 years of entertaining the world with offerings such as Soweto Blues, Bring Him Back Home — the allergic trumpet courtesy of legendary musician Bra Hugh Masekela has been silenced — in flesh though.

The late Masekela who died aged 78 after a battle with prostate cancer according to his family, launched his career after seeing the flick Young Man with a Horn at 14-years-old, and he began playing the trumpet.

His first trumpet was given to him by Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, an anti-apartheid chaplain at St. Peter's Secondary School.

He soon mastered the instrument and by 1956 joined Alfred Herbet's African Jazz Revue. Bra Hugh's music was inspired by the turmoil that South Africa went through during apartheid and he said it was used as a weapon to spread political change.

Bra Hugh was born in KwaGuqa township in Witbank in 1939 and began singing and playing the piano as a child. he became a renowned South African trumpeter, flugelhornist, cornetist, composer and singer.

Hugh Masekela

He is considered the "father of South African jazz." Masekela was known for his jazz compositions and for writing well-known anti-apartheid songs such as "Soweto Blues" and "Bring Him Back Home". He is the father of American television host Sal Masekela.

From 1954, Masekela played music that closely reflected his life experience. The agony, conflict, and exploitation South Africa faced during the 1950s and 1960s inspired and influenced him to make music and also spread political change.

He was an artist who in his music vividly portrayed the struggles and sorrows, as well as the joys and passions of his country. His music protested apartheid, slavery, government; the hardships individuals were living. Masekela reached a large population that also felt oppressed due to the country's situation.

Following a Manhattan Brothers tour of South Africa in 1958, Masekela wound up in the orchestra of the musical King Kong, written by Todd Matshikiza. King Kong was South Africa's first blockbuster theatrical success, touring the country for a sold-out year with Miriam Makeba and the Manhattan Brothers' Nathan Mdledle in the lead. The musical later went to London's West End for two years.

At the end of 1959, Dollar Brand (later known as Abdullah Ibrahim), Kippie Moeketsi, Makhaya Ntshoko, Johnny Gertze and Hugh formed the Jazz Epistles, the first African jazz group to record an LP and perform to record-breaking audiences in Johannesburg and Cape Town through late 1959 to early 1960.

Following the 21 March 1960 Sharpeville massacre—where 69 protesting Africans were shot dead in Sharpeville, and the South African government banned gatherings of ten or more people—and the increased brutality of the Apartheid state, Masekela left the country.

He was helped by Trevor Huddleston and international friends such as Yehudi Menuhin and John Dankworth, who got him admitted into London's Guildhall School of Music. During that period, Masekela visited the United States, where he was befriended by Harry Belafonte.

He attended Manhattan School of Music in New York, where he studied classical trumpet from 1960 to 1964. In 1964, Makeba and Masekela were married, divorcing two years later.

Bra Hugh played primarily in jazz ensembles, with guest appearances on recordings by The Byrds ("So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star" and "Lady Friend") and Paul Simon ("Further to Fly"). In 1984, Masekela released the album Techno Bush; from that album, a single entitled "Don't Go Lose It Baby" peaked at number two for two weeks on the dance charts.

In 1987, he had a hit single with "Bring Him Back Home", which became an anthem for the movement to free Nelson Mandela.

A renewed interest in his African roots led Masekela to collaborate with West and Central African musicians, and finally to reconnect with Southern African players when he set up with the help of Jive Records a mobile studio in Botswana, just over the South African border, from 1980 to 1984.

Here he re-absorbed and re-used mbaqanga strains, a style he has continued to use since his return to South Africa in the early 1990s. — tinzwei.co.zw/Online Sources

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