Hugh Masekela, South Africa’s trumpeter, jazz artist and anti-apartheid activist, died on Tuesday in Johannesburg, after suffering from a prolonged prostrate cancer.
South Africa’s minister of arts and Culture, Nathi Mthethwa, announced the death of the 78 year old music legend who spent three decades in exile on Twitter.
“A baobab tree has fallen, the nation has lost a one of a kind musician with the passing of Jazz legend bra Hugh Masekela. We can safely say bra Hugh was one of the great architects of Afro-Jazz and he uplifted the soul of our nation through his timeless music,” Mthethwa tweeted.
Masekela's music achievements are enumerable, his classic, Grazing In The Grass topped the Billboard Hot 100. He was the first African male Grammy nominee (1968). He also won the Lifetime Achievement Award at the CHOMVA, Ghana Music Awards, Jazz FM Awards and MAMAs.
Mr. Masekela came to the vanguard of his country’s music scene in the 1950s, when he became a pioneer of South African jazz as a member of the Jazz Epistles, a bebop sextet that included the pianist Abdullah Ibrahim and other future stars. After a move to the United States in 1960, he won international praise and upheld the mantle of his country’s freedom struggle.
In the 1970s, Mr. Masekela toured sub-Sarahan Africa and began a partnership with Nigerian Afrobeat musician Fela Kuti.
He also worked with the exiled South African saxophonist Dudu Pukwana and began fronting the Ghanaian group Hedzoleh Soundz. He recorded two albums with the group, “Introducing Hedzoleh Soundz” and “I Am Not Afraid,” and toured the United States with them in 1974.
In 1986, Mr. Masekela founded the Botswana International School of Music, a nonprofit organization aimed at educating young African musicians. The next year, he played with Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo on the “Graceland” tour, which was not allowed in South Africa but made stops in nearby countries. On that tour, Mr. Masekela often performed “Mandela (Bring Him Back Home),” a hit song demanding justice for Nelson Mandela, who was imprisoned on Robben Island at the time.
Consequently, in 2010, Mr. Masekela was awarded the Order of Ikhamanga in gold, South Africa’s highest medal of honor. Since 2014, Soweto has been the site of an annual Hugh Masekela Heritage Festival, with the stated aim “to restore our South African heritage and to uplift the local artisans of Soweto.”
