Hugh Masekela

Lore & Background

Hugh Masekela was born in Witbank to Thomas Selema Masekela, a health inspector and sculptor, and Pauline Bowers Masekela, a social worker. His younger sister Barbara Masekela is a poet, educator and ANC activist. Raised largely by his grandmother, who ran an illegal bar for miners, he began singing and playing piano as a child. At age 14, after seeing the film Young Man with a Horn, he took up the trumpet. Archbishop Trevor Huddleston bought him his first trumpet and arranged lessons with the leader of the Johannesburg "Native" Municipal Brass Band. Masekela quickly mastered the instrument and helped form the Huddleston Jazz Band, South Africa's first youth orchestra. Louis Armstrong, hearing of the band from Huddleston, sent Masekela one of his own trumpets as a gift.

In 1959, Masekela joined Dollar Brand, Kippie Moeketsi, Makhaya Ntshoko, Jonas Gwangwa, and Johnny Gertze to form the Jazz Epistles, the first African jazz group to record an LP. Following the 1960 Sharpeville massacre and increased apartheid brutality, Masekela left South Africa with help from Huddleston, Yehudi Menuhin, and John Dankworth. He studied at London's Guildhall School of Music and later at the Manhattan School of Music in New York. He married Miriam Makeba in 1964; they divorced two years later.

Masekela had US hits with "Up, Up and Away" (1967) and the number-one "Grazing in the Grass" (1968). He appeared at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival and was featured in the film Monterey Pop. In 1974, he co-organized the Zaire 74 music festival around the Rumble in the Jungle boxing match. He collaborated with the Byrds and Paul Simon, and in 1987 his single "Bring Him Back Home" became an unofficial anthem of the anti-apartheid movement. He founded the Botswana International School of Music in 1985 and later returned to South Africa in the early 1990s.

Reader's Guide

Hugh Masekela's significance lies in his role as a pioneering figure in South African jazz and as a musical voice against apartheid. His compositions, such as "Soweto Blues" and "Bring Him Back Home," directly addressed the struggles and sorrows of life under apartheid, reaching a large population that felt oppressed. His 1968 US number-one hit "Grazing in the Grass" brought South African-influenced jazz to a global audience. Masekela's career spanned decades, during which he blended jazz, mbaqanga, funk, and South African sounds, and he collaborated with international artists including Paul Simon and the Byrds. His legacy includes the founding of the Botswana International School of Music, which continues as the annual Botswana Music Camp, and his autobiography Still Grazing, which detailed his personal and political struggles. He is remembered as "the father of South African jazz" and a key figure in using music to protest apartheid and inspire change.

Did You Know?

• Masekela's first trumpet was bought for him by Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, and Louis Armstrong later sent him one of his own trumpets as a gift.
• His 1968 hit "Grazing in the Grass" sold four million copies and reached number one on the US pop charts.
• Masekela founded the Botswana International School of Music in 1985, which evolved into the annual Botswana Music Camp.

A Johannesburg Milestone

Released in the year 2000 through the Shanachie label, Sixty stands as a studio album that returned Hugh Masekela to the soil of his origins. The sessions were captured in Johannesburg, South Africa, grounding the project firmly in the musical landscape that first shaped the trumpeter's art. The album's title and timing suggest a deliberate act of self-reflection, most likely tied to the celebration of Masekela's sixtieth birthday. Rather than reaching outward toward new collaborations or unexplored genres, the record looks inward, assembling a collection of primarily African works that trace the melodic and rhythmic threads running through his life. For a musician who had long since become a figure of global recognition, the decision to anchor this particular project in the traditions of his homeland speaks to a desire to honor where he came from. The Shanachie imprint, known for championing world music artists, provided a fitting home for a record that prioritized cultural specificity over commercial breadth.

Roots and Rhythms

The musical architecture of Sixty opens with a direct homage to Fela, a figure described as both a kindred spirit in the world of African horn playing and a personal friend of Masekela. From that opening gesture, the record unfolds through a series of traditional songs, inviting listeners on what can only be called a journey down memory lane. The result is a tapestry of African musical heritage rendered through Masekela's distinctive trumpet voice. Yet the album is not without its cross-cultural echoes. At certain moments, the arrangements drift toward a sound reminiscent of Harry Belafonte's contemporary pop sensibility, a connection that becomes less surprising when one considers the repeated collaborations between Belafonte and Miriam Makeba, and the fact that Masekela was Makeba's husband. Adam Greenberg of AllMusic ultimately embraced these layered influences, declaring the record to be international pop at its finest, a testament to how deeply personal and cultural threads can weave together into something universally accessible.

A Divided Critical Response

The critical response to Sixty revealed a notable split in how reviewers interpreted Masekela's late-career choices. Adam Greenberg of AllMusic approached the album with warmth, framing it as a celebratory act of remembrance and praising its ability to blend African tradition with accessible pop sensibility. He saw the Belafonte-tinged passages not as a weakness but as a natural outgrowth of Masekela's personal and professional connections, culminating in his verdict that the record represented international pop at its best. Chris Wodskou of Exclaim!, by contrast, viewed the same material through a more skeptical lens. While acknowledging Masekela's stature, Wodskou suggested that the trumpeter seemed to be in a somewhat complacent state of mind, deliberately keeping the intensity low and allowing his signature funky undertones to remain tepid. Where Greenberg heard celebration, Wodskou heard a giant choosing comfort over challenge, and the tension between these two readings captures the broader debate about how artists should mark their own milestones.

The Giant's Later Chapter

By the time Sixty arrived in 2000, Hugh Masekela's career had already spanned decades of extraordinary musical evolution. He had first emerged as a towering figure within what critics have described as the greatly underrated South African jazz scene of the 1960s, a period that produced some of the most vital horn-driven music on the continent. From that foundation, Masekela went on to achieve international renown in the world music circles of the 1970s and 1980s, carrying the sound of Johannesburg to stages and audiences far beyond his homeland. Sixty, then, can be understood as a late-chapter reflection by an artist who had already conquered the world. Rather than pushing into new territory, he chose to look backward, drawing on traditional African songs and the memories of a life rich with collaboration and cultural exchange. The album stands as a capstone moment, a trumpeter who had given decades of his art to the world choosing, at sixty, to turn that art back toward the roots that first inspired it.