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Jan Goodey on Masekela: the
giant of jazz they couldn't muffle
One of the greats of South
African music, trumpeter Hugh Masekela, is a man of diminutive
size with a lion's heart. He's roared through a career
spanning more than forty years which has seen him alternately
exiled, attacked and fêted. Having had the good fortune to
see him play Ronnie Scott's, I can assure you that it's like
nothing else you've been to. The fusion of pop, urban jazz and
world beats proved such a positive heady brew that at the end
I walked out on another planet as if I'd just attended a good
group therapy session. What I couldn't understand was how my
friend had managed to sleep through it - sitting as we were
under Mr Masekela's very nose? Days later he was diagnosed
with glandular fever, so that explained that!
Born outside Johannesburg
in1939, Masekela's first foray into music came aged three when
he would wind up his grandmother's gramophone and sing along.
It was a chance meeting twelve years later with leading
anti-apartheid campaigner Father Trevor Huddlestone, his
school chaplain, that led to Masekela acquiring one of Louis
Armstrong's trumpets. From then on the impressionable young
Masekela was hooked, sneaking away to watch the wryly-named
Bix Biederbecke movie 'Young Man With A Horn' whenever he
could, and forming the Huddlestone Jazz Band.
The political realities of the
townships soon started catching up with him though, just as he
was beginning to get his breaks. He had joined the orchestra
for the hugely successful musical King Kong which toured the
country in `59 to sell-out audiences. In Cape Town he'd
co-opted Abdullah Ibrahim and formed Dollar Brand, a jazz
combo with similar appeal. However Sharpeville was on fire and
the bullets were threatening to muffle the music for good.
'There was something in the air and I knew I had to get out of
there before I choked,' he recalled. Huddlestone was on hand
once again and managed to spirit him away, first to London and
then New York
In America, Masekela was back
on track. He reunited with partner, and no mean singer
herself, Miriam Makeba and they were soon wed. Meanwhile he
toured and played with the legends, Miles Davis, Dizzy
Gillespie and Louis Armstrong. He had it made. Who could say
otherwise when in 1968 your hit single, Grazing in the Grass
put out on his Chisa label, was keeping the Rolling Stones off
the top spot in the billboard charts? 'That was a great time,'
he's been quoted as saying. 'It was the time of the
anti-Vietnam War rallies, and the first time that
African-Americans were beginning to assert themselves. The
Afro-American experience is the only real culture America has.
Basically everybody tries to walk, talk, dress and behave like
African Americans.'
The seventies and eighties saw
him take a different tack back to these African roots. He
teamed up with the late, great Fela Kuti in Guinea who
introduced him to Afro-beat and Hedzoleh Sounds. 'I found
certain vitality in Afrobeat. Playing with the band was like
being on a big fat cloud. You couldn't fall off,' he said at
the time. The subsequent six albums are widely reckoned to be
his best.
After a brief, successful
collaboration with jazz legend Herb Alpert, he started touring
again, headlining concerts in Swaziland, Lesotho, Botswana,
but not South Africa where he was barred, the government
determined not to let his influence spread. Ironically
Masekela was criticised for breaking the UN cultural boycott
of the country when he joined Paul Simon on a world tour
promoting the Graceland album in 1987. He was phlegmatic about
the whole affair, 'Paul Simon has brought the music of South
Africa to ten million ears - that's never been managed
before.'
Since his return from exile, he
has teamed up with a new generation of jazz musicians to whom
he is consciously passing on the baton. His latest albums may
tip their hat to music from his past, but more importantly
they pay tribute to the present and the likes of Don Laka,
Fana Zulu, John Hassan - the new breed of South African
musicians. To paraphrase one of his early songs, the lion
still roars.
Hugh Masekela Band at The
Event, West Street, May 10, sponsored by Hospitality Plus (UK)
plc. Box Office: 01273 709709.
Wobble
gels
Jah drops back in to fuse
pop and ritual by Polly Marshall
"I just sit in my kitchen
with one of my sequencers, a notepad and a pair of small
speakers, and write lots of music." Jah Wobble makes it
sound so easy.
In the 1980s, he broke the
mould and threw it away as part of Johnny 'Rotten' Lydon's
second popular music combo, Public Image Ltd (PIL). Now, with
Invaders of the Heart, Wobble's created a world beat
phenomenon, fusing all points of the sonic compass as he
explores the connections between traditional Far Eastern music
and the heavy beats and grooves of reggae.
Back to the beginning. At 18,
Wobble left the mean streets of his native Stepney to work as
bassist in PIL. He borrowed a bass from Sid Vicious; and a
moniker, arising from Vicious's drunken slurring of the more
prosaic John Wardle. 'Awesome and original,' trilled the
Melody Maker, as Wobble, slumped in an armchair, captivated
audiences on The Old Grey Whistle Test.
Then came the underground years
- quite literally, as Wobble dropped out of the music business
in the late 80s to work as a train driver for London
Underground.
Into the next century, Wobble's
latest release is this summer's Molam Dub, inspired by the
thousand year-old musical tradition of Laos in the Far East.
Neighbour to Vietnam, the gentle Buddhist nation is mostly
known in the West for soaking up America's spare bombs during
the Vietnam War. Molam is a stylized courtship ritual in which
male and female singers improvise in rhyme to the churning
rhythms of the khene, the bamboo mouth organ which is the
national instrument of Laos.
Molam is now so popular in Laos
and western neighbour Thailand that it has spawned pop formats
with guitars and drums. A long-term fan, Wobble came across a
fine group of singers called Molam Lao conveniently based at
the continental end of the Eurostar route. Molam Dub was
recorded in sessions that were "an exhilarating
party".
A karate practitioner, Wobble sees parallels with his music:
"Just doing it is the joy," he says. "And also
like the martial arts, I want to get it out there and not
start panicking about success, because the whole music
business is in very bad shape anyway, and now is the time for
smaller companies to be able to relax and take a few chances.
And I think there's going to be more professional amateurs
like me - for whom the joy is making the music and who believe
in the music but don't need to sell 50 million records to
boast their self-esteem."
Very British, Wobble is
self-effacing to a fault. The Cockney diamond geezer was
brought up Catholic, a spirituality still important to him as
the Virgin Mary shares mantelpiece space with the Buddha.
However, he's worked with some
of the greatest in the business. As long-term collaborator
with Can's Holger Czukay and Jacki Liebezeit, Wobble has built
on the legacy of the German masters. The Celtic sound also
provides inspiration, with Sinead O'Connor's soaring vocals on
the Invader's hit Visions of You, and verse from Shane McGowan
and Dubliner Ronnie Drew.
In Brighton, Wobble is joined
by Molam Lao, Ronnie Drew and the awesome New York bassist
Bill Laswell who has also worked with Herbie Hancock, Dub
Syndicate, Brian Eno, Mick Jagger, Yoko Ono and Laurie
Anderson.
This year, Brighton Festival
is, not before time, putting on a welcome new programme called
Modern Music. The inclusion of Wobble's Invaders of the Heart
- the funkiest event of Festival 2000 - indicates a refreshing
change of heart.
Invaders of the Heart with
Bill Laswell, The Event, May 28 £13.50, Box Office: 709709,
sponsored by Bonett's Estate Agents.
copyright New Insight 2000 |
