Hugh Masekela

Jazz maestro

Hugh Ramopolo Masekela is a talented, Grammy award-winning jazz musician; he plays the trumpet and the flugelhorn and has recorded albums that have gone gold and platinum.

His fans refer to him as “Bra Hugh” (“Brother Hugh” in tsotsi taal, which is a mix of different languages including Afrikaans and is spoken in the townships around Gauteng). He has been a recording artist for more than five decades and has always been able to reinvent himself and produce music that appeals to different generations.

Music promoters never have any difficulty marketing the brand Masekela, as his shows are always sold-out, anywhere in the world. From the Kippies Jazz Club to the Hollywood Bowl, Carnegie Hall and the Royal Albert Hall, music fans always arrive in their numbers to listen to him play his music live.

Due to his sold-out shows at the Teatro at Montecasino to celebrate his 70th birthday, promoter Tony Feldman restaged these “Bra Hugh” concerts during the FIFA World Cup™ tournament. Masekela also performed during the opening ceremony and at the kick-off concert held on June 10 2010.

The list of artists that he has collaborated and worked with includes Paul Simon, Simply Red, Bob Marley and Thandiswa Mazwai.

Masekela was born on April 4, 1939 in the Kwa-Guqa township in Witbank, Mpumalanga. He started playing piano and singing when he was just six years old. When he was 14, the anti-apartheid activist Archbishop Trevor Huddleston gave him his first trumpet and organised for him to have lessons. He was a fast learner and his passion for the instrument inspired him to start the Huddleston Jazz Band with his schoolmates, South Africa’s first youth orchestra, named after the Archbishop.  

Masekela’s music has always been a reflection of what he saw happening in his country, and that got him into trouble with the apartheid authorities. He ended up spending 26 years in the USA because he was not allowed to come back to South Africa. The Archbishop and some of his friends helped Masekela enrol at the Guildhall School of Music in London. He then moved to New York where he studied at the Manhattan School of Music.

In 1963, he started working closely with Miriam Makeba, who was enjoying success in the States, playing on some of her best albums. Masekela then recorded his first solo album called Trumpet Africaine. The two artists got married in 1964 but it only lasted two years.

Masekela eventually returned to South Africa after the release of Nelson Mandela and now lives in Gauteng.

He is the founding member of a drug rehabilitation programme called the Musicians and Artists Assistance Programme of South Africa. It is aimed at helping performing artists who are battling with addiction. The issue is close to his heart as Masekela himself battled with drug and alcohol addiction for over 30 years.