Masekela, << ma seh KAY luh, >> Hugh (1939-2018), was an internationally known South African jazz trumpet player. He was also a successful bandleader and composer.
Hugh Rampolo Masekela was born on April 4, 1939, in Witbank (now eMalahleni), in what is now the South African province of Mpumalanga. He dropped out of school in 1955 to form a jazz group called the Merry Makers. Masekela gained his first recognition as a member of the band Jazz Epistle Verse I with pianist Adbullah Ibrahim (also called Dollar Brand) in 1959 in Johannesburg. The band blended the music of South Africa’s black townships and their churches with American big band sounds. Jazz Epistle was the first black band to make a long-playing record album in South Africa.
With the assistance of the African American entertainer Harry Belafonte , Masekela left South Africa in 1960. He studied music briefly in England and at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City. He led a jazz quartet in the United States in the 1960’s and had a number-one hit recording in “Grazing in the Grass” (1968). Masekela was married to the South African singer Miriam Makeba from 1964 until they divorced in 1968.
Masekela was co-composer of the stage musical Sarafina! (1987). The show, which protested the South African government’s policy of apartheid , became a hit in the United States and was made into a motion picture in 1992. Masekela’s autobiography, Still Grazing, was published in 2004. Masekela recorded and toured internationally until a few years before his death on Jan. 23, 2018.
