Hugh Masekela

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

First of all, I mentioned that you obviously covered and incorporated a really diverse range of styles in your music over the time. I’m just wondering why you were able to do that so well?

Hugh Masekela

Well, I got into music as a child. The first time I saw a gramophone – I don’t know if any of you know what a gramophone is, the thing you wind up for every record – I was fascinated by this box that could bring out all this wonderful sounds, all kinds of varied sounds. And I was about three years old when I insisted that they hold it for me, so that I can wind it up myself and put the needle on the record. So by the time I was five years old, my parents thought that maybe my interest in music was good enough to take piano lessons. So, I got piano lessons and unfortunately for me I’ve been a musician ever since. This is my sixtieth year as a musician and I’m still learning. When you get affected by something you like, it’s not just the final product, I think, that should interest you. It’s how it gets there, you know? Especially today in an age where you press a button and it’s there. I think I was very curious and I followed music into many other things that came with it. It is for that reason that I have never been able in my head to categorize. If I hear a Chinese song from Canton and I like it, I like it because the song is nice and I don’t think, “It’s Chinese.” You know, if I hear something form Timbuktu, I don’t say because it comes from the Sahara desert, it’s deep or something like that.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

What sort of records were being played in your household? What sort of music where you being exposed to as a child?

Hugh Masekela

It wasn’t just my household. Everybody had a gramophone. A gramophone in those days cost 1 pound seven and six. 1 pound seven and six today would probably be... I don’t know how much. [laughs] But people saved up for it. Sometimes for a year, they put a schilling away, until they had 27 schillings. So, two years and some change, right? But everybody had a gramophone and the records cost seven and six. They used to buy maybe two or three every month. They played them on their porches, they just played them loud. And people had radios and Saturday morning from 10 to 10:30 there was what they called the “Bantu program” on the SABC. It was the only program that played African music. And the whole country put on. Like, in town the maids would have it on and their employers would conveniently have gone shopping, but the whole country would ring with that radio program. So, people followed music like sort of en masse and communally and they were obsessed with the songs and the dances that came with them. You just sort of absorbed the music as you went along. But there was like all the music from the area here. Music by the Manhattan Brothers, which is a singing quartet, by the African Ink Spots, which is a singing quartet, the Cuban Brothers, Ace Booja and the Manhattan Stars and then there was orchestras: The Jazz Maniacs, The Harlem Swingsters, Danny Pelizo and his All Star Band, singers like Dolly Rathebe and Dorothy Masuka and small groups like Zakes Nkosi, Elijah Nkwanyana and the Merry Makers. And then there was records from the States. The big bands, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey and, you know, just on and on. All the swing bands like Louis Jordan and His Tympani Five and, of course, Louis Armstrong. [imitates Armstrong’s voice] And everybody tried to like sing some of his songs. And there was Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, there was the Modernaires. And then there was shorts in the movies, you know? Half an hour shorts, sometimes they feature one or two of the bands, sometimes with the Step Brothers or the Nicholas Brothers, who were tap dancers.

People in the townships started to emulate, to come up with their versions of that. This is where gumboot dancing came from. You know, they saw movies of people tapping together and thought, “We can do it with the gumboots.” But they actually wear the gumboots, so they can sweep the streets or pick up sanitation. So, it was like a really heavy musical milieu. It wasn’t just music from the records. But it was the churches. All the different churches had their different music. And then people from all, especially if you lived in an urban area like Johannesburg, people from Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi and the different parts of South Africa on weekends would find a corner and an open field or what and wear their plumage, you know their traditional plumage. And every weekend was like a carnival. And then we just catered street songs.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Is it true that your inspiration to pick up the horn is in part due to Kirk Douglas?

Hugh Masekela

Well, I finally saw a movie when I was 13. It’s a movie called Young Man With a Horn. The story of Bix Beiderbecke, who was a great trumpet player that died about the age 29 and was from the States. He was one of the greatest improvisers and all that. So, they dramatized it, he was also a big trouble maker, but in the movie he always dances in front of the band and he has the finest, finest threads all the time and he takes all the solos and he doesn’t take shit from anybody and always gets the girl. So, we figured this is the instrument to play... [laughs] and it tend out to be the most difficult instrument. I’m still trying to learn it now. And I never got the girl.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You were also mentored by an individual called Archbishop Trevor Huddleston.

Hugh Masekela

It wasn’t actually mentored by Archbishop Trevor Huddleston. I don’t know if you ever heard of him? But Trevor Huddleston was an anti-Verwoerd, not even anti-apartheid, but anti-Verwoerd. [Hendrik] Verwoerd was the architect of apartheid in this country. He hated Verwoerd with a passion. And every time I had to go to confessions, he told me, “I got so much hate, but I am a priest, I’m not supposed to have it, so I have to go to confess all the time.” [laughs] But Huddleston was also one of the greatest activists South Africa ever had. When Bantu Education, which was inferior education for African people in this country, was introduced, Huddleston convinced the archbishop of the Anglican diocese to reject it and rather close all the African schools. ‘Cause in those days, all the schools were missionary schools. But Huddleston was interested in restless souls. He always wanted to know, what was driving you and could re-channel your energy into something positive. And finally Huddleston asked me one day, “What do you really want to do?” And I had just seen this movie and I remembered it and said, “Father, if you can just get me a trumpet, I won’t bother anybody anymore.” And he said, “Are you sure?” I said, “I promise you.” So, he send me to Poleax, which was the music store on Eloise Street in those days, to Bob Heal, who was a Scottish bass player with the roughest brogue you ever heard. [impersonates Scottish accent] And he sent me with a note, “Give this poor boy a trumpet. I can only afford 15 pounds.” And Bob Heal said [in Scottish accent again], “Father must be crazy to think you can buy a trumpet for 15 pounds.” But anyway, [laughs] he got me a second-hand trumpet and Huddleston got me a teacher, who was leader of the Johannesburg Municipal Brass Band. Everybody called him Uncle Sauda. And he came and taught me how to play the trumpet. But I was already a piano player, so it didn’t take me too long to find the mechanism; I already knew music. But when I started playing tunes, the other boys got interested and they went to ask Huddleston for instruments. And he started to buy instruments for all of them and soon we had the Huddleston Band.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

What was the time frame between that and the Merry Makers of Springs, which was another band you formed, right?

Hugh Masekela

The Merry Makers, I didn’t form. It was a trumpet player called Elijah Nkwanyna, who I still try to play like. He played in Banzi Bangani’s band and the Merry Makers while I growed up. He was just a fantastic player, an amazing player, and my dream was to really be able to play mbaqanga, which was the township dance band music of those days, kwela. He could play the trumpet and he had the biggest tone and he could sing. And when he sang, the women all used to go [in a high-pitch voice], “Ah, Elijah...” And he only played the trumpet and, “Elijah, whoooo...” He played beautiful. My parents knew the band owner, my uncle was a friend with his son, so he said, “Listen, this kid just started to play.” I think I just picked up the trumpet for two years. “He will play with the band for nothing.” And Elijah and his friend Banzi took me in. ’Cause Elijah, at that time, was always playing the tenor saxophone beautifully, so they needed a third trumpet player. They had another left-handed trumpet player. And I became the third trumpet player in the Merry Makers. And that is where I cut my teeth. I was the envy of all people my age. “He is playing with the Merry Makers!” And when I went back to school, to boarding school, after the holidays, I taught the band some of the arrangements of the Merry Makers.

I just finished this book that I wrote about my life and I’m giving it all away here. [laughter] And Huddleston went to America and he met Louis Armstrong. He told Louis Armstrong about the band and Louis Armstrong sent us a trumpet – one of his own trumpets. We were in the news. In those days, African people, you never saw them on the front page in the newspaper. Mostly, we were on the crime list on page nine. [laughs] So, for that whole year, every magazine and every book wanted us, and that brought us to the forefront. We became sort of part of the music community in this country.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Tell us a little bit about getting first to London and then to New York.

Hugh Masekela

When Huddleston finally got me papers to get out of town, Johnny Dankworth, who was a great English jazz band leader, had been here. And he was deported, when they found out that he was married to a Jamaican woman of African blood by the name of Cleo Lane. Yehudi Menuhin also came here. He was deported for hobnobbing with the natives. Huddleston hooked up with them because at that time he was like setting up the anti-apartheid movement overseas. And they started becoming very big activists and activism organizers. And he got them to get me a letter from the Guildhall School of Music to say that they accepted me. With that, I was able to get my passport.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

And you got to New York also through some sponsors?

Hugh Masekela

I’ve grown up, way and around Miriam Makeba, you know, we were very close. When I was in England, it was 1960 and she had really like broken out big in the States. She was on first name basis with everybody from Louis Armstrong to Duke Ellington to Ella Fitzgerald to Miles Davis. Harry Belafonte had taken her under her wing and taught her, but she was like the toast of America. But she needed some help with the music and she knew how much I hankered to get like a music education. So, she organized Belafonte and Dizzy Gillespie, John Mehegan, Miles Davis and a few other people to sponsor me. With her help also in the school, I ended up in September 1960 in the Manhattan School of Music – with the help of all those people. I think that between Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba, I got so much generosity that it inspired me to sort of vindicate their belief in me, you know? By the time I was in my second year of school, I had record offers because I played on Miriam’s second album a muted trumpet on three of the songs. And they were the most played songs on that album and then word got around and I got a record contract and, of course, the rest became history as time went on.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Did you consider coming back, after you graduated?

Hugh Masekela

Yeah, in 1963. I mean, I just was fired up, I had all the knowledge that I wanted and I was playing great and I wanted to become a teacher back in South Africa. I went as far as England. I nearly came back. Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba, but especially Belafonte said, “With a mouth like yours, you’re not gonna get too far in South Africa now. Mandela has been sentenced to death, all your friends are leaving the country, and a lot of them are getting killed. You go in there with your kind of mouth and your kind of disposition and they gonna nail you. And nobody knows you. So, you not gonna make it and if they kill you, nobody is gonna know and after a week or two, it will be forgotten about. But if you stay [in America] and try to make a name for yourself, and talk about your country the way you feel, you will have access to the media and you will be able to pass the word around on behalf of the sufferings of the people back there. You will be able to do it through songs, etc.” And I remember I said to him, “But Harry. How do I know I’m gonna make a name?” And he said, “Man, we can’t give you everything. We are on your side, ain’t that enough for you?” So, it’s very important for me in the rest of my life, to give back. I don’t think that I’m gonna ever be able to pay back what was done for me because a lot of people helped me. And if you don’t give, I guess, you don’t get.

Miles Davis pulled me aside one day and said [imitates Miles’ hoarse voice], “Listen man, let me tell you something, you wanna be a jazz musician? There is thousands of us. You just will be a statistic. But if you put some of that shit of your home into the shit you're doing...” – every other word with Miles was shit – “...and you put some of the shit you doing home into the shit you’re doing now, your shit is gonna be mad and mean, you know? You gonna be bad. And then we gonna learn something from you, you know? Something we don’t know.” And I said, “Are you sure?” “Yes, man, because this way you gonna be just a motherfucking sideman the rest of your life.”

So, as soon as I got my memory back again and started like zoning in on into townships and township flavored music, everybody paid attention, and I got a deal with MGM. My first successful record was called The Americanization of Ooga Booga. [laughs]

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You’ve been back for 13 years now? Is that correct? What is your impression of how things are now in this country?

Hugh Masekela

Well, from the perspective of an artist, this was a very isolated country, artistically speaking. Although we had all the wherewithal materially to have been able to do these kind of things, to build this kind of institutions of information, the arts were always suspect in South Africa. For the last government, the arts were used basically to say, “How can you say we are so bad when we have Miriam Makeba and Abdullah Ibrahim and all those people and they can talk about us as much as they want.” It wasn’t like something that was nurtured. And then the arts business... I mean, this country, for the infrastructure it has, and the audience it has, should have by now a very, very big independent entertainment industry. But it really doesn’t exist. Whatever exists is sort of not really indigenous, it’s a wannabe, an imitation of other countries. And yet our resources in South Africa and in Africa, but especially here, are so diverse, you know? We have such a rich history and a cross section of so much wealth and so much different kinds of people and music and sounds and so many stories. It is a country of 350 years of endless wars. It’s a country where there was so much suffering. A very beautiful country. A country with very funny people, very generous people, who were forced because there is so much mutual admiration for each other, they were forced not to, legislatively. The damage that was done to us by apartheid in other words, is that it sort of limited our adventurism into who we are, into ourselves and what we have here. It does not disturb me, but the element that I’m most obsessed with, is the element that I wish every creative person, to try and extract value from. I wouldn’t call it a renaissance, it’s a revival, but it’s not gonna be done through talking and, of course it has to be done through funding. There’s no revival without funding because a lot of funding was put into destroying the fabric that we were before we were forced into isolating. Isolating ourselves from each other and also like being isolated from the world. So, a lot of funds and effort has to be put back and I think it’s up to the youth of the future of this country to open that window because it’s one of the richest windows in this world. You know, the world is very, very keen to know who we are. And we are not telling them, you know? We can tell them entertainingly. When people come here they miss the people because the people haven’t showed them who they are and they go for the animals. ’Cause they can’t find the people, they go for the big five. [laughs] But if they knew where we were, they would come and find us. But we have to do it. So, it’s a thing that will happen. I know, I have been philosophical, but in reality that is how it is. You know, in the past we have subconsciously lost our self-esteem. We think we are not good enough. But believe me, to a great extent we are winners in almost everything we are going to try because we have a major drive and passion. We have a background that is richer than most people that come from most countries. And we have to take advantage of that. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have made it as far as I have.

Audience Member

I was wondering, if you could talk a little bit more about how songs come to you. That whole process of creation.

Hugh Masekela

I think that any artist’s best work, this is my crazy notion, their best work is not originated by themselves. I think, there is some kind of spiritual, some conscious mode, you put yourself in so as to receive. Because none of us are original. Like my grandmother said, “We didn’t come here with anything.” The less you think that you know, the better you can receive and the more enthusiastic you can be about what you don’t know. The most popular songs I have ever done, like “Bring Back Nelson Mandela,” I know I didn’t write. I was in Botswana in 1985 and Mandela wrote me from Paulsmore Prison a birthday card on April 4th. Because Winnie Mandela worked as a social worker, she did have field work under my mother in Arizona township. So, she knew us from that time. When she went to visit Mandela, she told him what I do overseas and in Botswana and what my sister was doing. And being the crazy nut that he was in corresponding with everybody, he sent me a birthday card. And it ended with, he knew all the music stuff. And he said, “Keep up the good work. Good luck.” And I’m saying, “Here is a guy who’s in jail and he’s encouraging me, who is outside. That’s not even generous, it’s weird.” [laughter] And it made me feel so bad for him that I just started crying and I went to the piano and started singing this song word for word and it just came. I would say he sent it to me, or he opened me up for it, to be sent in. The same thing with “Coal Train.” When I was four, five, six years old, I lived in a coal mining town at my grandmothers cabin. I talked to the people from the mine who came there to drink, and they tell me about the conditions, like my father had been in the mines and I saw the conditions that they lived in. You know, in the hostels and all that. And then 30 years later at a party up in Woodstock, and having a great time and all of a sudden I had to rush to the piano. I get to the piano and I start singing “Stimela,” just as it is. My friends are going, “When did you write this song?” And I say, “Shhh, it’s coming in, so shut the fuck up!” [laughs]

Audience Member

It’s quite an honor to have you around here, I’d like to say that. I just wanted to find out your take on young producers doing remixes of your music. Not necessarily you, but everyone who is like from way back. So, I just wanted to know, how you feel about that, us guys remixing your stuff?

Hugh Masekela

Fortunately, because I don’t even think it’s mine – when people say, “I love your music.” I say, “It’s not even mine because my grandmother is haunting me.” It’s not my music, I found it here. You know, we don’t come with nothing here. And whatever is happening to me is like supposed to happen. It’s not a bad thing. I would be worrying if you all were beating each other with your guitars on the head. That would be bad. But if that [remixing] is happening, it would be great because I, too, imitated other people. And I still try to play like Elijah Nkwanyna. Art is for sharing. If you find any artist and they use the word “this is my,” you know, already there is a problem there. Because there is nothing anybody can say is theirs. You know, even Einstein tried to explain that with his theory of relativity, but people said he is a genius. He said, “I found it here.” If you look at a group like Mafikizolo, they are doing original music of theirs, but they sound like they come from the 1940s. Their sound. But you know, with a group like that, you immediately know, it’s not their fault. They are sent. They don’t know, they’re just mediums.

Audience Member

What do you think about the late stuff Miles Davis started to do in like early ’70s, this electronic stuff? People thought it was wack because it was too futuristic for them.

Hugh Masekela

All I can say is, that it was sent to him. That is all I can say.

Participant

But did you like it?

Hugh Masekela

I liked some of it. The thing is, I used to be always there when Miles played. He used to play at the Village Vanguard all the time and I been there almost every day. He was complaining to me, when I started recording [imitates Davis], “You are stealing my shit.” [chuckles] Whenever I came to the club, he said, “I know, what you here for, my brother.” But I followed him everywhere, you know? Because he was an amazing player. And then when he changed, his first album was [In A] Silent [Way] and then he did Bitches Brew. By then he was also doing mostly concerts. Also, when he had like the Herbie Hancock trio and that quintet, with Wayne Shorter and them, his stuff was changing. He said to me, “I don’t see you much around anymore?” I said, “I’m working.” He said, “You are full of shit. You are just like all the other people. You don’t like what I’m doing, but I don’t give a shit.” But that was Miles Davis. And he had a bigger following when he played that stuff than ever before. Because then he became great friends with Jimi Hendrix and those people. He did some amazing stuff. Things like Jack Johnson – that album. He did some amazing things and some things that were difficult for me to understand. But I don’t dislike anything. When it doesn’t get me, I don’t play it, I don’t go listen to it.

Audience Member

Do you admire any of the young producers or musicians out there? Is there anyone, you admire doing their thing today?

Hugh Masekela

That I admire?

Audience Member

Yeah, production-wise.

Hugh Masekela

How much time do you have?

Audience Member

OK, who is one of your favorites then?

Hugh Masekela

It depends on the week.

Audience Member

This week!

Hugh Masekela

This week in my car, I am playing Zizi Congo, Salif Keita, his new album. I’m playing The Best of Marvin Gaye. Every time, I hear his voice, I shake my head. And I’ve got Louis Armstrong with Jack Teagarden, they used to do all those duos. And I have got Mafikizolo. On their new album, I just did a duet with them about “Here Come the Police.” And we co-wrote the song and that is the fifth album. The sixth record I got is Gilberto Gil’s new album. He is an old friend. But I change my records every week. Sometimes I listen to classical music, sometimes I play Eastern music. Some of my most favorite music is Gregorian chants. I mean, the harmonies! I went to Tbilisi in Georgia and in every church 24 hours a day there are Gregorian singers just singing around the clock. And the harmony and the purity of their voices is just amazing.