Still Grazing: The Musical Journey of Hugh Masekela
by Hugh Masekela and D Michael Cheers
(Crown Publishers)
A personal history of Hugh Masekela inevitably involves a history of South Africa under apartheid.
After all, it was apartheid that forced Masekela to move abroad, for fear that his sharp tongue and hot temper would land him more than just a night in jail.
“My trumpet became my weapon,” writes Masekela of his response to the time. It is this weapon that forms the focus of the book and links the events of Masekela’s life as he becomes one of South Africa’s prize-fighter musicians.
In Still Grazing Masekela seems to exorcise much of the pain and anger apartheid has left him with, while at the same time exploring the many opportunities he gained by living in the United States, where he went from being an avid admirer of music legends to becoming one himself.
Masekela and co-author D Michael Cheers, an American lecturer in African studies, trace the beginnings of Masekela’s love for music — for jazz and for the trumpet — from his early childhood up to the present day.
Initially, Masekela trips over himself as he tries to give too much information too early in the book. But he soon settles into a rhythm that alternates tales of his personal life with the politi-cal events going on around him, in both South Africa and the US. The authors have divided his story into sections, covering the range of his life.
The first part, “Home”, speaks of when he first fell in love with music at the age of four; receiving his first trumpet from Father Trevor Huddleston and forming the Huddleston Jazz Band and, of course, the famous Louis Armstrong trumpet sent to him while still living in Alexandra.
The second part, “The World”, describes the enviable education Masekela received at the Manhattan School of Music and hanging out with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and his long-time mentors Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba.
The final section, “Africa”, brings Masekela’s story full circle as he returns to South Africa and deals with the drug and alcohol addictions he picked up along the way.
It is an engaging story, featuring many colourful characters, and covering a broad range of events in the contemporary history of Africa and the US, as Masekela travels these continents. From Paul Simon’s Graceland to Don King’s Rumble in the Jungle and even the Monterey Pop Festival, performing alongside Jimi Hendrix and Otis Redding, Masekela has lived a rich life, steeped in the tradition of jazz but full of other genres too.
One almost expects a fuller interpretation of the characters these events included, forgetting that it is Masekela’s views and perceptions we are reading.
So when he disputes the reason his and Makeba’s marriage failed, one is inclined to want to re-read, or read for the first time, Mama Afrika’s autobiography too, just to get both sides. As if the authors anticipated this, they have included it in an extensive bibliography of recommended reading.
Also recommended is a CD of selected Masekela songs, from 1966 to 1974, compiled by producer and friend, Stewart Levine, and released in conjunction with the book, perhaps to be listened to while reading.
The book is written for an overseas audience, explaining the details of South Africa’s segregated past, but it still remains an African story of an African musician who hit the world with his single Grazing in the Grass and who is now an international icon.