Hugh Masekela is a 40-year veteran trumpet player, considered among the most elite of jazz players over the course of the past 40 years. If you’ve never heard of him — and I count myself amongst you — you’re in for something pretty amazing, especially if you’re an aficionado of the genre. While guys like Bill Chase and Maynard Ferguson were (deservedly) getting most of the credit for helping bring big band and jazz music to the masses, Masekela was toiling away in practice rooms in a bantustan, one of the self-governing city states South African blacks had been forced into as a result of segregation during Apartheid. His music is a reflection of both that racial oppression, and his main weapon in fighting it for nearly 50 years : albums like Hope are full of that very emotion; “Grazing in the Grass” and “Languta” are both light of heart and manage to blend a certain New York/big city flavor with the sounds of Masekela’s own culture and home country. It’s likely what inspired Paul Simon to hire him for his masterpiece Graceland. Even tracks like the self-explanatory “Mandela (Bring Him Back Home!)” are void of any of the more somber tones employed by his peers Charlie Parker or Miles Davis to capture their respective darker moods, in favor of providing his audiences with something to dance to and celebrate. You listen to Masekela, and you’re getting not only the best the genre has to offer, but that very emotion in the music. On Red Bull Music Academy Radio now.
