Telcom giant Safaricom has redesigned its jazz programme with the introduction of a series of monthly musical events that will serve as a prelude to the annual Safaricom International Jazz Festival.
The latest event in the series kicked off on July 28, with the Safaricom Jazz Night at the Intercontinental Hotel featuring three local jazz groups: Nairobi Horns Project, Mwai and The Truth, and Shamsi Music.
Hugh Masekela, South Africa’s foremost jazz exponent, will be the main performer at the Safaricom Jazz Lounge, which has been slated for August 12. This will be the world-renowned trumpeter’s first appearance at the Safaricom Jazz.
Commenting about the trumpeter’s appearance at the jazz event, Collymore said: “We are honored to be hosting one of the most influential African Jazz musicians; a man who has not only played an integral role in advancing Afro-jazz music on the world stage but also showed the world the role of music in bringing social change.”
The recipient of two Grammy Award nominations for his two albums Grazin’ in the Grass and Jabulani, awarded in 1968 and 2011, respectively, Masekela isn’t new to Nairobi jazz fans, though. He has previously performed in this city in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Also, his recordings have been featured prominently in the city’s jazz circles and the local FM radio stations. His most recent album titled Playing @ Work was released in 2013.
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With not less than 40 albums under his name recorded from the early 1960s, Masekela’s music ranges from straight-ahead jazz, modern jazz and Afro-jazz. In the latter style, the trumpeter has infused his music with rhythms from his native South Africa and other parts of the West African region. In fact, in the 1970s, he linked up in London with Nigeria’s foremost Afro-beat exponent Fela Ransome Kuti and performed several inspired gigs.
Hugh Masekela, who was born April 4, 1939, in Witbank, South Africa, is a highly-respected artiste whose music transcends any real or perceived boundaries. The trumpeter, who is also an accomplished singer, has performed in various African and European countries, and in the United States, both while he was in exile since the early 1960s and after his country attained independence.
He was among several young musicians who decided to escape from South Africa in 1960 due to the unbearable atrocities being meted out to Africans by the then minority white rulers under the chilling and discriminatory apartheid rule.
Hugh’s interest in music started in his early teens by singing and playing piano. He then switched to the trumpet while playing in a band led by Catholic cleric, Trevor Huddleston. Unfortunately, the priest was deported from South Africa for his anti-apartheid stance. It was then that Masekela teamed-up with Gwangwa to found the Merry-Makers of Spring. He then joined Alfred Herbert’s Jazz Revue, and also worked as a studio musician backing other artists. It was in that band where he met and eventually married the celebrated vocalist Miriam Makeba.
Although he worked under extremely difficult conditions, the trumpeter was able to express his musicality both as an instrumentalist, composer and arranger.
And it wasn’t long before he was acknowledged by his contemporaries, who included Ibrahim, Gwangwa, and saxophonist Kippie Moeketsi with whom he teamed-up in the then-vibrant straight-ahead jazz outfit, the Jazz Epistles.
One year later, in 1961, he was to be followed into exile by Ibrahim and the pianist’s later-to-be wife Sathima Bea Benjamin.
While in exile in the United Kingdom, he enrolled and studied at the world-renowned Royal Academy of Music, and, subsequently, when he moved to the United States, joined the Manhattan School of Music in New York. His stay in the US was artistically fulfilling; he met some of his major influences in jazz music, the likes of trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie, Clifford Brown and Miles Davis, saxophonists John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley, vocalist Mahalia Jackson, pianist Horace Silver, and drummer Art Blakey.
In the meantime, he recorded with some of the best in jazz who included bassist Monk Montgomery, a pioneer of the electric bass and the first to record jazz music using the instrument, and a brother to the legendary jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery.
He also recorded with the then groove-oriented soul jazz band The Crusaders, fellow trumpeter-producer Herb Alpert, and vocalist Patti Austin, among others.
In 1964, Masekela married African queen of song Miriam Makeba. The two, however, divorced two years later.
The Safaricom Jazz Night and the Safaricom Jazz Lounge could, hopefully, be the just the platform for Kenyan jazz musicians who desire to sit and learn at the feet of a legend and polish their knowledge and jazz skills.
