HUGH MASEKELA (MAAXERU-EM-HETEP) PRO-DEMOCRACY CRUSADER + BRILLIANT MUSICIAN FOR THE AGES (MF GALAXY 154)
REPRESENTING SOUTH AFRICAN CULTURE, TRIUMPHING OVER DUTCH-ENGLISH NEO-NAZISM LISTEN/DOWNLOAD What were the weapons in the arsenal of a man who survived a vicious racial dictatorship to emerge as an international ambassador for his people and his craft? In the case of Hugh Masekela, who returned to the ancestors on January 23, 2018, the answer is two-part: a gramophone, and a Louis Armstrong trumpet. Born outside Johannesburg in 1939, Masekela began playing music at age three--by way of winding his grandmother's gramophone and singing along. In his career, his own music would fuse South African mbaqanga, bebop, funk, and Nigerian Afrobeat. His prolific six decades of making music took him around the world and granted him the personal victories of playing with such titans Abdullah Ibrahim, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Zensi Miriam Makeba, and Fela Anikulapo Kuti. His single “Grazing in the Grass” in the early 1970s topped the Rolling Stones’ “Jumping...