HUGH MASEKELA

MASEKELA "I'm the sum total of my influences; I don't categorize myself."South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela is best known for his 1968 feel-good worldwide smash, "Grazin' In The Grass." But he's always been far more than a pop musician. From his first love, jazz, to funk and African music, he's covered all the bases.

"Hugh is a great musician," said his longtime guitarist, John Selolwane. "He's very, very versatile. He's a superb, arranger, musician, and composer, and he has a great ear for music. He can play anything very well."

Masekela, 61, whose latest album is, Sixty, (Shanachie), started his musical career with piano lessons when he was six. But after he began St. Peter's Secondary School in Rosettenville, he saw the 1951 Kirk Douglas film Young Man With A Horn, "and that brought me to trumpet."

Masekela's prowess on the trumpet meant that he soon became involved in bands, playing with African Jazz and the Merry Makers, "which had my main mentors, Elijah Nkwanyna and Banzi Bangane. They were my first idols, especially Elijah." Those blowing days are recalled "Bo Masekela."

In 1959, at the age of 19, he was part of the Jazz Epistles who recorded the first albums of African jazz. But to develop, he needed to go abroad. Sponsored by former colleague (and future wife) Miriam Makeba, he ended up at the Manhattan School of Music in New York, where "you weren't allowed to play jazz in the rooms."

While studying, he'd also sit in with likes of Dizzy Gillespie and Les McCann at the jazz clubs. Once his studies were complete, however, he decided to return to South Africa.

"I wanted to impart the knowledge I'd gathered," Masekela recalled. "But by then it was really too late. People were being imprisoned and killed. Harry Belafonte told me that with my big mouth I'd never last in South Africa. He suggested staying in America and making a name for myself. Then, when I talked, people would listen."

Masekela heeded the advice, and over the next years played all over the U.S.. He opened for Motown acts, played jazz and folk festivals, and in 1967 was in San Francisco, where, he said, "I was a flower child! I hung out with Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix."

Already unclassifiable because of the breadth of his music, the next year "Grazin' In The Grass" made him a huge pop star. The track itself was just filler, recorded in half an hour, but it brought him international fame. Then, in 1972, he turned his back on all that, and headed back to Africa.

"I couldn't just parade my success when there such oppression at home, and I didn't know Africa, although I was from there. I decided to go and follow my ear."

One of his guides was Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, who is celebrated on the "Fela."

"He introduced me to a lot of bands, especially Hedzollah Sound in Ghana, and over the next seven years I made three or four albums with them," which included the original version of "Been Such A Long Time Gone."

Settling in Botswana, he opened a music school, and stayed there until 1985, "when the South African Defense Squads came and raided, and killed a lot of people, including friends of mine. At that point the government couldn't safeguard the life of any South African activist, and I'd been very active."

Moving to England, he co-wrote the score to the musical Sarafina! then hooked up with Paul Simon to play on the Graceland tour. Simon had come under fire for breaking U.N. sanctions and recording in South Africa, but Masekela's presence was an eloquent defense.

"We still reminisce about it!" said guitarist Selolwane. "For all the controversies, Paul Simon did a lot for South African music. He helped it come into the international sphere. Ladysmith Black Mambazo wouldn't be an icon today if he hadn't fused them into what he was working on. Music is music, it cuts across all barriers."

Finally, with the end of apartheid, Masekela was able to go home.

"It was hard to believe until it actually happened," he said. "Reliving a dream isn't something you think about; it's a fantasy. But I'm in the midst of my fantasy right now!"

These days, Masekela is involved in trying to put together an infrastructure for young musicians, film makers, and television producers in his country, so that "maybe by the next generation our artists will be going to other countries as an exception, not a rule. If I have 15 good years left, I'm going to use them to help develop and African arts industry that's as dynamic and independent as India's."

He'd like to stop the grind of touring, and hopes that will give him "time to put our more albums, because I miss the days of Blue Note and Riverside when artists could put out five or six records a year."

The man who had ?'the hit,' the jazz player, the African musician, the funkster; after more than 40 years of playing, Masekela remains unclassifiable, and he wouldn't have it any other way.

"I'm the sum total of my influences; I don't categorize myself. Because I got into music as a child, I still have a very childlike approach to it. I'm just passionate and eclectic about it."

This article first appeared on Sonicnet.com

Hugh Masekela