South African trumpeter and vocalist
Hugh Masekela celebrated his 75th birthday with a little help from some
old friends - Paul Simon and Harry Belafonte - in the city where he
began what turned out to be a 30-year exile from his homeland.
Introducing Simon near the end of
Friday night's concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater,
Masekela noted that millions of people “who had never heard of South
Africa before were just charmed and turned around by the album he made”
in 1986- “Graceland,” which won Grammys for Album and Record of the
Year.
Masekela did not perform on the
singer-songwriter's groundbreaking world music album much of which was
recorded in South Africa when he was still exiled because of his attacks
on the apartheid regime. But he and his former wife, singer Miriam
Makeba, joined Simon on his “Graceland” world tour which gave South
African musicians global exposure.
Masekela and Simon then sang two
of the album's biggest hits - “The Boy In the Bubble” and “You Can Call
Me Al” - backed by his quintet of young musicians, all but one of them
from South Africa.
Earlier, singer Sibongile Khumalo
earned a standing ovations as she joined Masekela for one number,
displaying the multi-octave range and powerful voice that has earned her
the reputation as South Africa's “First Lady of Song.”
Masekela's son, Sal, opened the
concert by noting that his father has been “sharing the gift and the joy
of music to people all around the world for the last five decades. For
some reason, he does not get old.”
Masekela,
who turned 75 on Friday, proved that by performing for more than two
hours - playing fluegelhorn, singing, engaging in call-and-response
patterns with the audience, and even throwing in a few dance moves.
He offered a retrospective of his biggest hits including:
“Bajabula Bonke (The Healing
Song)”; “Stimela (Coal Train),” in which he imitated the sounds of the
train bringing conscripted black men from all parts of southern Africa
to work under exploitative conditions in the gold mines around
Johannesburg; and the joyful 1968 pop instrumental hit “Grazing in the
Grass,” during which the audience heeded his request to “stand up and
shake some booty.”
He also performed Bob Dylan's
“It's All Over Now, Baby Blue,” describing its composer as “one of the
greatest warriors against injustice,” a nod to the years he spent in the
late '60s on the West Coast where he recorded with The Byrds and
performed at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.
Masekela later gave a shout out to
Belafonte who was seated in the audience, describing how the singer
helped bring him in 1960 to study at the Manhattan School of Music
after he left South Africa as the apartheid regime became increasingly
repressive following the Sharpeville Massacre in which dozens of black
protesters were killed by police. A year earlier, Masekela co-founded
the Jazz Epistles, the first black South African jazz group to record an
album. Most of its members left the country after the government banned
concerts and radio broadcasts by prominent African artists.
Masekela described Belafonte as
“not only my father by also my mentor,” giving him advice that helped
turn his life around. “He advised me, 'I know that you came here, you
love to play jazz, but you should put some of that stuff from your home
into what you do.”
Masekela
closed the concert by paying tribute to his close friend and No. 1 fan,
Nelson Mandela, observing that Mandela and other African National
Congress leaders were thrown into prison as young men, only to be
released as old men decades later. Masekela returned to his homeland
after Mandela's release in 1990.
“Their spirit wasn't broken and
they said to us to try and forgive those people who oppressed you ...
and build this country together ... but never again in the future of
this country will one group of people ever get to dominate another,” he
said, noting that this month South Africa will be celebrating its 20th
anniversary as a free nation.
He then performed his song “Bring
Him Back Home (Nelson Mandela),” inspired by a letter from Mandela
smuggled out of prison in April 1985 wishing the trumpeter a happy 46th
birthday. The song which became an anthem of the anti-apartheid
movement anticipated the day Mandela would walk freely down the streets
of Soweto with his wife.
The evening ended with Masekela's son bringing a birthday cake onstage as the audience sang “Happy Birthday.”
Source: SAPA
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