Results for "Hugh Masekela"

Hugh Masekela

Born: April 4, 1939

Hugh Masekela was a world-renowned flugelhornist, trumpeter, bandleader, composer, singer and defiant political voice who remained deeply connected at home, while his international career sparkled. He was born in the town of Witbank, South Africa in 1939. At the age of 14, the deeply respected advocator of equal rights in South Africa, Father Trevor Huddleston, provided Masekela with a trumpet and, soon after, the Huddleston Jazz Band was formed. Masekela began to hone his, now signature, Afro-Jazz sound in the late 1950s during a period of intense creative collaboration, most notably performing in the 1959 musical King Kong, written by Todd Matshikiza, and, soon thereafter, as a member of the now legendary South African group, the Jazz Epistles (featuring the classic line up of Kippie Moeketsi, Abdullah Ibrahim and Jonas Gwangwa). In 1960, at the age of 21 he left South Africa to begin what would be 30 years in exile from the land of his birth

Camilla George At The MAC

by Ian Patterson
July 4, 2022

Camilla George The MAC jny:Belfast, N. Ireland June 25, 2022 It was a sell-out crowd for Camilla George's Belfast gig, the penultimate stop on a ten-date tour of Ireland. In part, this no doubt reflected people's hunger for live music after the socio-cultural privations of lockdown, but above all, it ...

Township Jazz: Unlocking The Vaults

by Chris May
April 8, 2022

Britain is often said to be the first country to have forged a style of jazz distinct from its American parent, during the late 1950s, in part through the influence of London-based players from South Asia. Closer examination of calendars and the historical record, however, shows that South Africa found its own jazz voice at the ...

Christine Kamau: Delivering Afro-Jazz Power

by Nicholas F. Mondello
January 27, 2022

In the blockbuster film, Black Panther (Marvel Studios, Walt Disney Pictures, 2018) the power of and quest for “Vibranium," an all-powerful element, plays a pivotal role. Like a latter day female T'challa (The “Black Panther") and through her music, Kenyan musician Christine Kamau delivers a unique and powerful perspective of her own, melding jazz with its ...

Summer Of Soul (...Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised)

by Ian Patterson
August 5, 2021

Various Artists Summer Of Soul (...Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised) Onyx Collective/Searchlight Pictures 2021 One of the most thought-provoking moments in Ahmir 'Questlove' Thompson's documentary on the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival comes from a festival attendee, looking back from the distant perspective of half a century. “I ...

Various Artists: Indaba Is

by Chris May
January 9, 2021

There are probably several reasons why American jazz made the deep and lasting impact it did on South Africa in the 1950s. One may be that the colonial regime which was imposed on the country during Europe's pan-African nineteenth-century landgrab was among the most vicious of them all, and persisted the longest through the apartheid system ...

Rejoice

Label: World Circuit
Released: 2020
Track listing: Robbers, Thugs and Muggers; Agbada Bougou; Coconut Jam; Never (Lagos Never Gonna Be the Same; Slow Bones; Jabulani (Rejoice, Here Comes Tony); Obama Shuffle Strut Blues; We've Landed.

Meet The JazzTwins, Arnold and Donald Stanley

by Tessa Souter and Andrea Wolper
December 9, 2020

For our first two-for-one Super Fans column, we present the JazzTwins, Arnold Stanley and Donald Stanley, who got started pretty young (just wait till you see who played at their high school concerts). All jazz Super Fans are VIPs, but these two take things to another level. From invitations to musicians' family dinners to being the ...

Chris May’s Best Releases Of 2020

by Chris May
December 7, 2020

Not the best year for live gigs in London, but Dele Sosimi's Afrobeat Orchestra just made it under the wire, lighting up the Jazz Cafe in late January. Rather like Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Sosimi's band has form as an incubator of young talent. A recent star in the making was trumpeter Ife Ogunjobi, who has ...

Tony Allen & Hugh Masekela: Rejoice

by Chris May
June 12, 2020

"Unfinished" is the kindest word to describe this album, recorded in 2010 and left on the shelf until its release was prompted after Hugh Masekela passed in 2018. It should have stayed on the shelf. The album consists of eight tracks of noodling by Masekela, accompanied by autopilot timekeeping from Tony Allen, who ...