MASEKELA, RAMAPOLO HUGH

Ramapolo Hugh Masekela (April 4, 1939 – January 23, 2018), popularly known as Hugh Masekela, was a South African trumpeter, flugelhornist, composer, singer and anti-apartheid activist who became one of Africa’s most celebrated musicians.

PHOTO CAPTION: Hugh Masekela. SOURCE: The Guardian.

He was born on April 4, 1939, in Witbank, now known as Emalahleni, in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa. He was the son of Thomas Masekela, a health inspector and sculptor, and Pauline Bowers Masekela, a social worker and ardent supporter of education and community development. He grew up in a family that valued education, social justice, and cultural expression.

Masekela attended St. Peter’s Secondary School in Johannesburg, where his interest in music developed. At the age of fourteen, after watching the film Young Man with a Horn, he became fascinated by the trumpet. Anglican priest Trevor Huddleston recognized his talent and arranged for him to receive his first trumpet. He later joined the Huddleston Jazz Band, South Africa’s first youth orchestra, and quickly emerged as a gifted musician.

Masekela began his professional music career in Johannesburg and became one of the founding members of the Jazz Epistles, South Africa’s first modern jazz ensemble. Following the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, he left South Africa and went into exile, studying music in the United Kingdom and later at the Manhattan School of Music in New York.

During his years abroad, he collaborated with renowned international musicians and achieved worldwide fame when his instrumental hit Grazing in the Grass reached number one on the American music charts in 1968. Throughout his career, he composed and performed songs that exposed the injustices of apartheid and celebrated African resilience and identity. He worked in various countries, including the United States, Guinea, Botswana, and South Africa, and remained deeply committed to humanitarian causes, African unity and cultural preservation. His music profoundly influenced African jazz and inspired generations of musicians and activists across the world.

Often referred to as the “Father of South African Jazz,” he gained international acclaim for his unique blend of jazz, African rhythms and popular music. Through songs such as Grazing in the Grass, Bring Him Back Home (Nelson Mandela) and Stimela (Coal Train), he used music as a powerful instrument of resistance against apartheid and became an influential voice for freedom, justice and African cultural identity.

In his later years, Masekela continued performing, recording and mentoring young artists while advocating for social change and African artistic excellence. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer and underwent treatment for several years. He died on January 23, 2018, in Johannesburg, South Africa, at the age of seventy-eight.

Hugh Masekela’s legacy lives on through his timeless music, his unwavering opposition to apartheid and his immense contribution to African jazz, making him one of the most influential cultural ambassadors in the history of modern Africa.

EA EDITORS