PHANTOM SWAY

    • Jazz for Nonbelievers – Hugh Masekela was Grazing in the Grass

    The first entry in our series on Jazz for Nonbelievers is South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela who just passed away in early 2018. Masekela incorporated numerous different styles into his music including bop, reggae, traditional African melodies, funk, R&B, and pop.

    In 1968, his song Grazing in the Grass hit number one on the American pop music charts, which is not exactly a common occurance for jazz artists. Masekela also covered some American pop tunes in his signature style.

    Some of you may remember the ear-worm vocal cover of Grazing by Friends of Distinction.

    His official site probably has the most reliable online bio:

    Hugh Masekela was a world-renowned flugelhornist, trumpeter, bandleader, composer, singer and defiant political voice who remained deeply connected at home, while his international career sparkled. He was born in the town of Witbank, South Africa in 1939. At the age of 14, the deeply respected advocator of equal rights in South Africa, Father Trevor Huddleston, provided Masekela with a trumpet and, soon after, the Huddleston Jazz Band was formed. Masekela began to hone his, now signature, Afro-Jazz sound in the late 1950s during a period of intense creative collaboration, most notably performing in the 1959 musical King Kong, written by Todd Matshikiza, and, soon thereafter, as a member of the now legendary South African group, the Jazz Epistles (featuring the classic line up of Kippie Moeketsi, Abdullah Ibrahim and Jonas Gwangwa).

    In 1960, at the age of 21 he left South Africa to begin what would be 30 years in exile from the land of his birth. On arrival in New York he enrolled at the Manhattan School of Music. This coincided with a golden era of jazz music and the young Masekela immersed himself in the New York jazz scene where nightly he watched greats like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Mingus and Max Roach. Under the tutelage of Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong, Hugh was encouraged to develop his own unique style, feeding off African rather than American influences – his debut album, released in 1963, was entitled Trumpet Africaine.

    In the late 1960s Hugh moved to Los Angeles in the heat of the ‘Summer of Love’, where he was befriended by hippie icons like David Crosby, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. In 1967 Hugh performed at the Monterey Pop Festival alongside Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, Ravi Shankar, The Who and Jimi Hendrix. In 1968, his instrumental single ‘Grazin’ in the Grass’ went to Number One on the American pop charts and was a worldwide smash, elevating Hugh onto the international stage.

    In putting together the Spotify playlist above, I made the effort to find tracks that will appeal to even the most curmudgeonly jazz haters. I’ll attempt to do the same with each subsequent list. If you don’t find yourself tapping a toe to at least a few of these tracks, you may just have no soul.

    Jim Jamitis
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