HUGH MASEKELA
Genres: African Fusion, Acid Jazz, Pop, Art Song, Folk • South Africa

Hugh Ramopolo Masekela (4 April 1939 – 23 January 2018) was a South African trumpeter, flugelhornist, cornetist, composer and singer. He is considered the "father of South African jazz." Masekela was known for his jazz compositions and for writing well-known anti-apartheid songs such as "Soweto Blues" and "Bring Him Back Home". He also had a number 1 US pop hit in 1968 with his version of "Grazing in the Grass". Masekela was born in Kwa-Guqa Township, Witbank, South Africa to Thomas Selena Masekela, who was a health inspector and sculptor and his wife, Pauline Bowers Masekela, a social worker. As a child, he began singing and playing piano and largely raised by his grandmother, who ran an illegal bar for miners.[3] At the age of 14, after seeing the film Young Man with a Horn (in which Kirk Douglas plays a character modelled on American jazz cornetist Bix Beiderbecke), Masekela took read more...